- I can't for the life of me find the will or energy to do much for myself outside of sleep since having the baby.
- There is too much to say and it's all too painful to say.
Before I got married, there were several key people in my life who warned me of the difficulties that lie ahead if I were to go through with my wedding. My relationship with P has never been easy, but we both chocked it up to a passion that meant the pendulum swung equally far on the love and misery sides of the spectrum. Even when my own pastor told me that he didn't want to officiate our wedding (a mere 10 days before) because he felt I was making a monumental mistake...even when my friends told me that I was fooling myself...even my own skin crawled at the very real possibility that I was committing myself to someone who didn't really love me like I thought he did...even in the face of all of this, I was more afraid at the time of what it would mean if I didn't follow through.
A is now 6 months old, and I've entertained the notion of being a single mom more times that I care to count. My personal bias aside, it seems that my baby's extraordinary cuteness is almost a cruel joke, such a stark betrayal of the reality of the rest of my life. A is such a happy, easy, adorable baby, that the endless "you're so lucky" comments I get help me to at the same time feel so thankful for the gift of my baby and hide from the ugly truth of how unbearable my marriage has become.
The burden of my husband's complete unawareness of his double standards and cruelty are too much for me to bear, and I've committed to building up walls to protect myself. I'm not someone who builds walls easily. I'm an open book, willing to share my life's story with a friend, no matter how new. Even when faced with a betrayal of trust, I usually take it as a sign and lesson that I am not meant to be friends with that person and I move on. But after 6.5 years of learning and relearning this lesson over and over again about P, I think it's finally sinking in.
It wasn't a single act or event that laid the first brick of this wall, but I've been collecting bricks one by one over time. Each hurtful word, each lie, each hypocrisy...a new "thud" to add a brick to the pile.
Brick #1
When we were dating, I knew I loved P very early on. When I jump, I jump with both feet, smile on my face, arms carelessly in the air, and vibrating with excitement and anticipation. But P is very careful and calculating. I used to think this was a sign of thoughtfulness and wisdom. I now see it's only his way of building up a pile of coals to heap on people's heads when they finally prove they're unworthy, as he always suspects people will. Even after finally deciding he wanted to marry me, even after proposing, he still wouldn't say the words. When he asked me if it bothered me that he didn't say them, I confidently (and foolishly) replied that it would bother me if I thought that he didn't. He said that was a good answer. I misinterpreted this to mean that he agreed, that he did love me, but now I think that he meant exactly and ONLY what he said: it was a good answer.
He finally said the words about 2 weeks after our honeymoon, which was 4 weeks after our wedding. That's right. He didn't tell me he loved me at our wedding. He didn't tell me on our wedding night. He didn't even tell me in Hawaii on our honeymoon. But even so, when he finally said it, I felt triumphant. I KNEW IT and finally I had my confirmation.
Another of my mistakes was that I figured it would be easier for him to say it once he "broke the seal." I knew it was always difficult for him to say those words, to anyone, but I thought that somehow, once he started, it would come more easily. We've now been married for 2.5 years and I've heard it fewer than half a dozen times. When we argue, I tell him that this has caused me so much pain and is at the root of a lot of my resentment towards him. I tell him that all the betrayals I experienced early on due to his relationship (and his hiding it) with his ex come back to me and make me doubt his love for me even more.
P enjoys cooking tremendously, and I admit that since having A 6 months ago, I've cooked maybe 2 or 3 meals. I'm certainly thankful for this and realize that maybe 1% of husbands out there do this. P insists that the cooking he does and all these other acts of service should tell me he loves me. That this should be enough. But the problem with this line of thinking is that even his acts of service come with a cost. It all comes with a cost. During one argument, he stopped washing dishes, cooking, helping me carry the baby to the car. He said it was to prove a point. What point? That he neither cares about me nor about the baby as much as he care about himself, about being right?
When I asked him to try to commit to tell me he loves me maybe once a week, he responded this way: If you want me to say 'I love you,' then act loveable. To me, this feels like something you would find in some universal list of things a human being NEVER says to another. It would fall between "You should just kill yourself" and "You were a mistake." I've felt this way a number of times about things P's said to me. Wow...I can't believe someone would actually say that to someone else's face.
I tried explaining it to him this way: the words are my "first language" and the actions he's doing (which are in HIS comfort zone) are my "second language." Him refusing to speak my first language is the same as if I were to commit to him to give him 10 hugs every day for the rest of our lives but to refuse to ever sleep with him again. It's the same, right? I give him what I'm comfortable with even if it's not what he wants, but it's ok because it's close enough, right?
I've decided that hanging on to the hope that our marriage will get better, that one day he'll show me loves me in ways that I need and crave, have only left me vulnerable to more pain than I know how to bear. Believing in the possibility of change makes me a fool and gives me a false sense of reality. It's keeping me from happiness. The only way to make it out alive is to focus on my baby and accept I will not have the marriage, the love, I always dreamed about. A friend asked me, "But isn't that so sad? How can you live with that?"
It IS sad, but I can't live the way I've been living either.
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