On Strength and the Will to Survive or My Years with a Crazy Man

I have debated on writing about sex and marriage for a very long time. I mean, I'm an honest person and I don't want to take up a subject and then tiptoe around the real stuff and then the real value of the effort is lost. Where's the benefit in that, either for me or you? But marriage is a vastly interesting thing. It is amazing to me what can happen within the framework of relationships. It is fascinating how two people can start out crazy about one another and completely oblivious to one another's faults, strengths, weaknesses, biases, and personalities and then months or years down the road end up in utter amazement that you ever found anything of value or interest in the person. So suffice it to say that any honest examination of a relationship is inherently intimate and scary. So, I'll be honest in saying that I'm starting this post unsure of whether to post it. Let's call it a work in progress.

OK, a Feministing article sparked all this. They were raking some dipshit over the coals for saying that women should submit to their husbands in the bedroom whether or not they are in the mood. I nearly laughed out loud at the childlike reasoning this idiot was spouting. I feel sorry for his wife. She doesn't have a partner, she has a sexually demanding child to deal with.

But back to the story. He was in culinary school when we met. We had been living together for about 6 months before the proposal came. I was in no rush to marry. I was satisfied with the way things were progressing. D-ex Jeff had a way of pressing issues. For example, I never asked him to move into my apartment. He asked if he could bring some stuff over and store it at my place. I said, sure. I came home from work one day and the entire contents of his house was stacked floor to ceiling in my front room. I was speechless. I remember another day I felt that way: the day my advisor accidentally sprayed me with bear spray. I just looked at her. There was nothing to say. That's how we came to be living together. No discussion. No agreement. Just one day, everything he owned was in my living room. Hindsight is 20/20.

He got on one knee on the 12th floor elevator lobby of the Hilton Hotel and Towers in Chicago and asked me to marry him. I was a bit buzzed. We'd had a substantial fight that morning and I wasn't feeling entirely back to normal. He'd taken me to dinner in Greektown and I'd had several shots of Ouzo while we waited to be seated and at least a half carafe of wine with dinner. The proposal had the unusual effect of putting me entirely in my head. Arguments for and against starting rushing through my head like water. I don't know how long I was quiet. He asked for a response. I told him I'd think about it. He wanted an answer now. So as I sat there trying to speed up the critical analysis, but I was now distracted by a toe-tapping suitor. I was trying to think of how to say "no" gracefully, when "yes" came out. Actually, I think I said, "I guess." How's that for confidence? And from there, it's like a runaway train. The night is a blur. We went to some bars on Wells. We met up with some friends of his. It was a very long night of drinking. I remember being terribly bored and wanting to go home.

Fast forward to about 6 months into the marriage. He finally graduated from culinary school and was trying to establish himself in the business. Unfortunately, he kept getting fired. Claimed it was the norm for the business. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. Once he was fired his first day on the job for "brushing something off the chest" of one of the new waitresses. As he told me this story, I stared at him and the only thought I had was "I'm married to this guy. I can't fucking believe I am married to this guy." It's amazing that we weren't sued for everything we had. I didn't realize it then, but when my husband didn't like a job, he manufactured a circumstance by which he would be "unjustly" fired and then spend weeks fighting for unemployment. He was usually successful. It became his racket. If he spent half of that effort trying to actually make a living, he'd be a millionaire by now. By the 6-month mark of our marriage, I believe he had cycled through 4 jobs. I was dissatisfied with my married life, mortified by my husband's behavior, and humiliated to tell my family that my husband had lost yet another job. The next two years were spent in disbelief. I would save money for a downpayment on a house during his "employment phases" and then he would burn through it during the 6 weeks he was on unemployment. My life was a roller coaster, only I couldn't get off.

But the job problems were only the beginning. We had another problem. I would go to work, come home, and the minute I walked in the door, he relived every perceived injustice that had befallen him that day. From 5:30 pm until midnight, every weekday and all day on Saturday and Sunday, he would follow me around the house barking about how the world was doing him wrong. There comes a time when you stop listening. It's called self preservation. For a while, I got away with it, but one day he realized I wasn't listening. He began testing me. Ask me what he just said. If I couldn't answer, a fight started. I wasn't being a good wife. I wasn't trying to help him. How could I just zone out when he was trying to talk? Somehow--call it the response of the shell shocked--I bought into this. I mean shit. What do I know about married life? I tried to listen. The problem was, there was no break. He never stopped. There was no me. There were no personal thoughts. I had given everything I was over to listening to and caring for a man who's needs had no end. My life had turned into a never-ending therapy session punctuated by a quiz show I couldn't win. D disappeared.

As if this wasn't bad enough, there was one aspect of my life where things were really screwed up. In the bedroom. Now I have always considered myself someone with a healthy libido. Not just healthy, but...ahem...robust. And when we first got together and early in the marriage, our sex life was satisfactory. But when my husband began to lose jobs and lay around the house, my interest in him waned. I mean, who wouldn't want a slug for a partner? Who wouldn't be proud of their spouse? Not to mention that his lack of mental health began to take a toll on me. Sex with that wasn't quite the treat it once seemed. Soon it wasn't appealing at all. Unfortunately, he still wanted sex. And in between the constant chatter about his life came the belligerent complaints about our sex life. And whose fault do you think that was? It wasn't healthy for a woman not to desire sex. There must be something wrong with me. I tried to explain how his behavior was directly affecting my libido. He was incapable of accepting any responsibility for this situation. He demanded I see a doctor or psychiatrist. They had pills or therapy or something for frigid women like me. I can't count the days that I spent arguing about sex. And somehow, he seemed to think that humiliating me, berating me, and badgering me was going to make me miraculously want to have sex with him.

Now tell me. If you spent every waking moment of your life either working or propping up another human being and never thinking about or taking care of your own needs, how would your libido hold up? I am not exaggerating one iota when I say that this is the reality of my married life. For years, I never had a single thought about myself, about my needs, my wants, my desires, my aspirations, my life. Not one moment. I couldn't even read a book. He couldn't stop talking long enough to allow me to read a single chapter. My only respite was work. I began to stay longer and longer at work. I finally had enough and asked for a divorce 2 years in. He begged me to stay. He said it would get better. I just had to wait and see. He was wrong. It didn't get better. It got a lot worse.

Staying was the worst decision I ever made. My blood pressure was 160/110. I had nose bleeds. I gained a lot of weight in a very short time. I didn't want to come home at night. Sometimes I would drive up and down the highway until I was sure he was asleep. I hated my home. Don't recognize D in this picture? Neither did I. I realize now that I was a victim of an abusive husband. However, he was no more cognizant of his pattern of abuse than I was of being abused. I have no doubt that had we sought marital counseling, we would have been advised in the strongest terms to get away from one another.

The problem was not the day-to-day problems. It wasn't even the lack of sex. The real problem was I had lost respect for my husband. I wanted nothing more than for the man to shut up, pull himself up by his bootstraps and make something of his life. I wanted nothing more than for him to find some other outlet than dumping it all on me. I wanted someone who sought to seduce me, not some child throwing a tantrum for sex. I wanted a life in which I was respected. I wanted a life where I mattered. I wanted a man who was as concerned with my well being and mental health as I had tried to be for his. I wanted a partner. I tried to do things for myself during this time. I signed us up to join the YMCA. I liked to swim. So we went together and I swam and he played basketball. He didn't have a good time. So the next night, I went to swim alone. When I got home, I had to listen to 4 hours of how I had abandoned him. I never went back to the Y again.

I realize that I should have encouraged him to seek counseling. I may have. I remember he was fine with psychiatric help for me but revolted and insulted by the idea that it might help him. Every suggestion I had for self-improvement on his part was seen as criticism and a lack of support. To hear him tell it, there was nothing wrong with a man who burned through 20 or 30 jobs in 7 years, spent his life seeking his father's approval, and who launched into a nightly tirade against his wife, his life, and the world.

I. was. lost invisible miserable.

He wasn't the man I thought I married. I thought he'd get a job, work his way up, maybe jump restaurants because of opportunities, not because of firings. He didn't want to improve himself. He was a man of the lowest common denominator. He played the government-check system. The world owed him. In reality, if I'd had more experience, I might have noticed that was the norm in his family. But I was green. Stupid. Sheltered. I had no idea that people who claimed to love you would hide their real self until they married you and then burst forth like a boil full of toxic pus.

People had warned me not to get married. Oh, they didn't warn me not to marry HIM. They said I didn't have the capacity to compromise. So I came in prepared to compromise. I was 29 years old when I married. I had lived on my own since I was 17 and a half. Surely I knew a thing or two about life, right? Well, I didn't know shit. And I sure didn't plan on a life full of passive-aggression, real aggression, guilt trips, constant bickering, massive disappointment, hard feelings, and a complete loss of self-identity. Somehow, I convinced myself that all of these burdens I bore were part of the compromise that marriage demands. In any event, my world view, my life expectations, and my life were shattered. And living on this roller coaster was slowly sucking away my will to live.

I don't think anyone who has ever met me would think I lack for self esteem. I don't think that anyone would peg me for the type to consider suicide. I don't think that anyone who knows me would believe that I would put up with half of the shit I put up with in my marriage. But before it was over, I was fighting for my self preservation, my self image, my life, and my sanity. I honestly think if I had stayed married much longer I would have either died by my own hand or by a heart attack from the stress. He had a terminal illness. He couldn't keep a job. No job, no health insurance. And so, my life became nothing more than day-to-day survival to provide him with medical insurance that he couldn't maintain for himself. Many a day, while driving up and down the highway in an effort to avoid my home, I wished for death. I wanted to die. I wanted a merciful God to end it all. But there was no mercy for D. No tractor-trailers jumped the highway and flattened me. No nuclear power plant meltdowns. No blizzards stranded me in a snow drift to die a slow death. My fantasies weren't of dating celebrities. My fantasies were of an end to my suffering.

And then one day, a miracle happened.

I learned he was having an affair thanks to the miracle of cell phone bills. Most women would be upset. I was elated. I demanded a divorce. At last I had the upper hand. He begged again for me to stay. He said he would change. And somehow, in my head, I thought maybe we could turn it all around.

I decided to see what would happen. I mean at this point, I had all the cards. I told him it had to end. It was a long, harrowing night of discussion and tears and raised voices. But let me make this perfectly clear to you. The very next day, after he agreed to change his ways, invest in our relationship, end the affair and turn over a new leaf, I called the cellular phone he gave me for my birthday and she answered the phone. I calmly asked her to give the phone to my husband. I told him his things would be on the front lawn when he got home.

And thus, my marriage ended. Oh, I've left out some important parts, like the time he put his fist through the door when I shut a door between us. Or when he woke me up from a sound sleep, handed me the phone and told me the police wanted to talk to me for threatening to kill him. Or how he yelled at me in a car for 9 hours on the day we buried my grandmother because he was angry that my brother and sister-in-law left to go home before we did. Or the time I got out of the car at a rest stop in Indiana and refused to get back in because he was being so verbally abusive. Or when he tried to poke me with a dirty needle. Or when he threatened me with a kitchen knife. Or when he came to me the night we decided to divorce looking for break-up sex. Or when he flooded my work phone with his harassing phone calls. Or when I had to tell security at work that he wasn't to be allowed on the property. It was over. I had him by the short hairs and he knew it.

Lawyers. Settlements. Court. November 2, 2000. My new life began.

Recovery isn't short. It was two full years before I even wanted to think about dating. My libido returned slowly. It was quite a suprise to realize I did want to have sex, I just didn't want to have sex with him. I think I still have a pretty distorted perspective about sex to this day. And the players I have dated since my divorce haven't done much to improve this perspective. I am less afraid of the intimacy of sex than I am of the danger of relationships. I realize I still have a lot of work to do to return from that mental place I hid during my marriage. But the thing that worries me most is I can't trust my judgment when it comes to men. I mean, I actually thought he was a good man when I married him. I never saw it coming. I had no idea. Blindsided. It's like one day he peeled off a mask and I found myself married to a monster. I don't know how it happened. I don't know how I missed it before we married. I don't know how to protect myself from a similar fate again. But I do know that I can't afford to find myself in that place again. It will kill me. And knowing what that place is like, I'd want it to. So, when I say I'll never marry again, it isn't a simple distaste for married life that prompts a swearing off of something that just didn't work for me. I won't marry again because I don't want to die.

Marriage was the most harrowing experience of my life. I can imagine my ex reading this post and laughing it off. His experience of our marriage and mine were entirely different. In his world, I wasn't giving and loving enough. In my world, I gave up everything. I don't know if there is a lesson in this for anyone. I know that this isn't everyone's experience of marriage. I pray you never share my experience. I don't feel particularly cleansed by the telling of this. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I am strong enough to survive it and thrive again. But this is part of me. I don't know what part of it I'm supposed to take responsibility for, and what part of it just happened to me, and which part I can blame on him. I don't think any of that matters. It is my life, my experience, and my burden to bear. My life will never be the same.

I hope that one day I am able to enjoy a healthy, fulfilling, loving, empowering, giving, tender, supportive relationship with a good man. That is my secret wish for today, this year, my life. On the other hand, I wonder if I am capable of making myself that vulnerable again. In my experience, relationships are life and death propositions. I have reason to hope. The worst is over. Yes, I am vigilant, cautious, suspicious, and wary. But every day seems brighter. I'm alive.

I survived.

I am free.

I am free.

Do you hear me?

I am free.

And that is something I never thought I'd be again.

Happy New Year.

That's What Friends Are For

J and I have been having a very interesting series of conversations on race, politics, and economics lately. And maybe this is a bit off topic, but our discussions have caused me to focus on my own social awareness lately. I am interested in how I got to my present point of view. I mean, let's face it. I was raised in the same environment that produced those rednecks screaming "terrorist" and "kill him" about Obama, and "sit down, boy" to a black cameraman at McCain rallies. I know the people behind these epithets. While I tend to see my personal development as a continuum, I occasionally think that it is a continuum punctuated by forehead-smacking Gestalt moments where everything comes together and there is a fundamental paradigm shift. In any event, I have a tendency to personalize when I think about most issues and sometimes get lost in the forest for looking at the trees (i.e., my thoughts on race, economics, and politics arise primarily from my own experiences, hence the rather personal nature of a lot of my posts).

If my very public self-exploration has made anyone uncomfortable, I sincerely apologize. I examine my own thoughts in public because I think that there is nothing that fosters honesty more than the light of day. And just maybe, others can benefit from my voyage of self discovery. What I was trying to get at (and perhaps none too well) in my earlier post above love is that it is okay to talk about tough issues honestly and openly. We don't have to be embarrassed about being human. It isn't a breach of trust to disagree with those we love. It doesn't diminish me as a person or my capabilities for the future if I acknowledge that I was wrong in the past. Or to have someone point out to me when I am wrong in the present. So when I talk about my grandmother and her way of thinking, it doesn't mean I love her less. We may disagree on issues of race, but she taught me more about unconditional love than anyone else ever will.

Racial inequality is a very personal issue to me. Who knows why? Maybe I just identified with the outsiders. I don't recall ever having a conversation with anyone about these issues growing up. But to act like I accepted the status quo in my environment is fundamentally incorrect. I mean, at a very early age, I noticed that there was segregation--starting with the lunchroom at school. I agonized over ways to break that gridlock. It was easier to sit in my chair with my white friends than to get up and cross the room and ask if I could sit down at that table. I think I was more afraid that they wouldn't want me there. That they would just stare at me and I'd have to slink back to my seat in defeat. Fear of rejection is a crippling thing to a teenager. The fact that I didn't know what to do and so did nothing still fills me with a sense of regret. Stupid, I know, to beat myself up about things that happened 25 years ago. But at some point I made a distinct break with the social morality of my upbringing. I believe what prompted that break was what one friend termed "my overdeveloped sense of justice". Somehow that internal dialogue that others are able to suppress when they see discrimination kept screaming at me and all it said was "Why are you accepting this? You know this isn't okay." I decided to silence that voice and I started down a different road. And for me, that moment was both personal and liberating. It happened when I was sitting in my living room in Chicago listening to my brother make a racist comment. I remember that moment as if I'm in that room now. Not in my house. Oh hell no. Never again. Get out. That may well have been my first adult action. It wasn't as hard as I thought.

I remember a second such moment. It wasn't that long ago. Bek and I were sitting at a stop light in C-dale when she announced that it was okay that I found black men attractive. I didn't even realize that I had made that apparent. After all, I was still not admitting those feelings in public. So I can thank Bek for my second Gestalt moment. It validated feelings I had long hidden, like the incredible crush I had on a black kid at my school, but couldn't admit to anyone. Like the fact that I had married someone I wasn't particularly attracted to because he was acceptable in superficial ways to those around me.

Now, since "my people" as I'm so fond of saying (I'm only 2 generations removed from folks who never dreamed of a high school education) were the target audience for a Southern Strategy, I think that perhaps the best thing I can offer is some insight into what that has meant in my life and the lives of those around me. Maybe this insight isn't needed. Maybe it's been done to death. If that is the case, then this really is a personal journey, and that's okay, too.

"Meeting" J has really been helpful to me (thanks Liv!) because he has been instrumental in raising my line of sight above the treeline and pushed me to explore the broader impacts of these issues, which brings a whole 'nother level of analysis to my effort. I believe I'm always going to bring these issues into the personal realm, because that seems to be my shtick. I wonder though, if another head-smacking moment isn't in the making. I seem to be in a period of rapid growth. I'll keep you updated. Unless of course, you all just want me to STFU. =) Happy Friday.

I know a little about love

Tonight, I want to talk about love. You might not think it to talk to me, hell, you might not think it even if you knew me well, but I miss being in love. For all my bitching about marriage and the utter and absolute failure that mine turned out to be, being in love is...wonderful.

And the fact of the matter is love isn't hard, relationships are. I am the first to admit that half of the problem in my marriage was me, but there seems to be something larger going on here. When it comes to love, my siblings and I suffer from poor mate selection. Three of us are divorced, the fourth getting divorced after having stayed together just for the kids. (Trust me. The kids would have been better off if those two had gotten away from each other years ago.) One brother married a mental ward nurse who stole psychotropic drugs from her patients. My sister married a philandering counterfeiter. I married a pot-smoking, chronically unemployed man whose life ambition seemed to be getting on disability/unemployment without cause. My other brother married what I can only term as the biggest bitch on Earth, and I mean that in a respectful way, because she really had an aptitude for it. Although I have spent hour upon hour reflecting on this matter, I still have no explanation for this universal failure in my family. My parents seemed to have an incredibly life-affirming, strong, healthy, meaningful, and loving relationship. I'd have given anything to have met a man like my father. My sister and I joke that our man-pickers are broken.

The problem with marrying poorly is that you don't rebound like you did from the girlfriend-boyfriend relationships. It took me a full two years post-divorce before I could even think about dating again. But in that down-time, I did a lot of soul-searching and I learned a lot about myself, my desires, my sexual triggers, what I find attractive and what I do not. I don't know if it was the severity of the breakup that caused the intense reflection. When someone tries to kill you, isn't that natural? In any event, I've come to understand my faults, identify my idiosyncrasies, and also to know my own strengths and how I can use them to benefit a relationship. I have worked to tone down the more distasteful parts of my personality. Dare I say that I almost think I might have something valuable to offer someone in a relationship? I think I've achieved some measure of emotional maturity.

At the same time, my tastes have changed. I don't need a bad boy. I know what I find desirable and attractive and for once I can honestly say that if I find him, I doubt he will try to kill me this time. So here I am at 45 thinking maybe, just maybe, I'm ready to try again. So I put on my suit and dared anyone to say something about the way I look in it and I'm ready to dive in.

Unfortunately, someone drained the dating pool.

While small-town America was as good a place as any for undergoing this transformation, it isn't a great place to crawl out of your chrysalis. I've got these boss new wings and no one to flash them in front of. I have isolated myself in the middle of nowhere, over-educated myself, developed some pretty strong opinions, learned to stand on my own two feet, and realized that I don't NEED a man for anything. While that may be very empowering for me, it doesn't exactly put me high on the dating list for the pool of single 30- to 53-year olds in Poontwang, USA.

I'm reminded of those empty-nesters who say that now that they've learned all the lessons and gotten the kids out of the house, they finally feel prepared to raise a child. All that wealth of knowledge just...what? Wasted?

I try to be patient. I try to get out there, wherever there is. I've done the online dating thing. I've been willing to go on blind dates or be set up by friends. I seldom pass up an opportunity to meet new people, to mingle, to try. Nothing has been terribly successful. In the past 8 years, I haven't met one man truly interested in a serious, meaningful relationship. I've met an awfully lot of overgrown boys interested in recreating scenes from their favorite pornos. And ya know, I'm better than that. I just think that there is more to life than random sex or sex-buddies. I don't understand them....the players. They are just satisfied with the nothingness of meaningless sex. They don't even seem to be interested in love. I'm just left with the feeling that I could have done a better job myself, and I wouldn't have had to change the sheets. Love is such a wonderful feeling. Sometimes I wonder if I was ever in love at all. After a while, you being to doubt things.

There was a man once that I am sure I loved. I was young. He was forbidden. It was over really before it even started. It will be the greatest regret of my life if that small taste was all I ever get.

And if you wonder what prompted this, I'll tell ya. Take a look at this. I know at first it might not make sense, but it is relevant. He makes a statement about mid-way through this. Right about the point that he starts to get serious. He says, "I am an expert on my own story."

It's an excellent point. We are all experts on our own story. A little self-analysis, a little introspection, even if we don't find the ultimate answer, is seldom a bad thing. If it weren't for self-introspection, I'd still be drunk dialing old boyfriends. And usually our behavior and our outlook are more important than our achievements and whatever glory and reward we seek. Whatever I have learned about love....whatever I have learned about being a good person in this world....I have learned from examining my own story and making sure it was leading down the road I wanted. Making adjustments, constant vigilance. And we don't have to be embarrassed about sharing these things. Craig Ferguson can do it on national television. I can do it in a blog. I had a professor give an extremely moving life lesson to a classroom that expected a lecture on Hamlet. We needn't hide behind some veil that makes us pretend not to be human. We fuck up. We learn from it. We move forward.

I did a terrible disservice to a man when I agreed to marry him. I should have known better. Now I do. I want to love again. There, I said it. And I feel better for it.

Coming Out of the Closet

Ok, I've decided to combine a few of my blogs or at least come out of the closet about one of my anonymous blogs.

For those interested in my ideas, a backlog of my old stuff can be accessed at LJ. Just a warning, there is a lot of random crap in that blog, too.