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| Hilton Head proved to be a good place for thinking. |
This Sunday, September 1 marks
the three year anniversary of the beginning of the end of my marriage. In mid-August
of 2010, I went with my then-husband’s family on their annual pilgrimage to
Hilton Head. During this trip it was as though I had awoken from a long, deep,
foggy sleep during which I had been oblivious by choice to all of the goings on
around me. I had come to accept some unacceptable behaviors from my then-husband,
and I had chosen to pretend that other behaviors did not exist. I also chose to
deny the ever crashing downward spiral our marriage was in. And then, as we
drove to meet his family at the beach, somewhere around the Georgia-South
Carolina border, I just woke up.
I started to see things as they
really were. I noticed how the man I was married to no longer resembled the one
I had dated and married. I saw how my husband, once so clean cut and neat
looking, now looked like the Unabomber after two months in hiding. On the trip
I began to think it odd that he had packed two large bottles of liquor that he
would get out and pour himself drinks from late at night as he watched tv with
his 15 year old half-brother, never bothering to come to bed until well after I
had turned in for the night. First, two large bottles of liquor for a four day
trip? And, second, drinking with your 15 year old half-brother? Come on! I
began to view my then husband’s red-rimmed eyes, inability to get up in the
morning, and lack of interest in anything I wanted to do, not with pity and
understanding, but with anger.
I called my mom after the first
night we were there and told her I wanted to come home, and that I wasn’t sure
I wanted to continue with the man that I felt I didn’t know at all anymore. I
decided to do things that would make me happy while I was at the beach—things
that I had not done previously because I was so busy trying to do everything to
make my husband happy. I had always wanted to visit the knitting and stitching
shops in the area but, as he was never interested in accompanying me, I had
never gone before. So I set out on my own to do the things that I liked. First,
I went to the nearby Target and got a phone charger and a phone headset. I then
took day trips on the first two days, and while driving I talked nonstop with
my mom, which allowed me to process my feelings and helped me to get to the
clarity of mind that allowed me to make a life-changing decision. When back at
the condo I decided to be honest. I called my ex-husband out on his bad
behavior. I think he was so shocked that he didn’t even know how to react,
because he was so used to my taciturn acceptance and enabling. We did not talk
much during the remainder of the trip, and the ride back was nearly silent.
The day after we got back to
Atlanta we went out to breakfast. We went to a place we never usually went and
had to use the GPS to find it. The most notable communication we had that
morning was a vicious argument about how to properly hang the GPS on the front
window to keep it from falling off. He maintained the suction cup needed to be
moistened before hanging it, and I maintained that it did not. Although he was
actually correct, it was clear that the argument had nothing to do with the
GPS. I am sure some of you know exactly what I am talking about.
Marriages ebb and flow like the
tide. There are times in every marriage, even successful ones, in which the
couple is on better terms than they are at other times. There are times when
couples go through things, when they disagree, when they may just not love and
appreciate each other quite as much as they once did, and all of this is
normal. In successful marriages, however, the tide turns, and the pendulum
swings back in the other direction, to a place where the couple is once again
in love and appreciative of one another. What no one tells you before you get
married, though, is that it is possible that your seemingly loving, wonderful,
even perfect relationship can swing so far in the negative direction that it is
just incapable of bouncing back. On the day of the GPS argument, my marriage
was in such a condition.
We could have fought about the
GPS, the weather, the state of the economy, and probably even over whether or
not the sky was blue. The point is, no matter what the issue may have been, we
would have vehemently disagreed. I think we each felt the other was holding us
back from something. We had slowly come to know, after our first days of
marriage, that we were not as compatible as we had originally seemed. We did
not have similar interests, similar values, similar notions of family or love, similar
ideas about acceptable quantities of alcohol to consume on a daily basis, or
similar goals in life. To everything that I said to-MAY-to, he said to-MA-to.
And it truly was time to call the whole thing off.
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| When I tried on swimsuits, I felt like Shamu wrapped in a bookcover! |
About three weeks after we
returned from the beach, after many hours of the kind of deep self-reflection
typically only achieved with the help of mind altering drugs, I was on the
verge of making a decision. Then, on Sunday, August 22, I went shopping for a
new swimsuit. You ladies know how it is. Shopping for a swimsuit can be a
really horrible experience. I was only trying to get one to, you know, actually
swim in when I went to the YMCA to exercise, so I was just looking for a modest
one-piece and I didn’t have to worry about all of the problem areas that might
be seen had I been buying a two-piece. Well, on top of all of the emotional
turmoil I felt due to all of the reflecting I had been doing, swimsuit shopping
proved to be too much for me. I didn’t find even one swimsuit that I thought
made me look marginally better than Shamu wrapped in a book cover, and I came
home, upset and in tears. My then-husband comforted me by patting my shoulder,
clearly thinking about someone or something else. I knew he didn’t want to try
to make me feel better, and I didn’t really want him trying to make me feel
better, so I went back in our bedroom, closed the door, and sought comfort from
my dogs instead.
That night, we ended up having
another fight, and he made a comment so disparaging, so personal, and so aimed
at the things I disliked most about myself that the tenuous thread that
connected me to him just snapped.
“I want you to get out of my
house,” I told him, finding that I meant it more than I had meant anything in a
long time.
I had bought the house before we
were married and, although by that time both of our names were on the mortgage,
the house was down the street from my parents, and we both knew it really was
my house. I don’t think he had any desire to be neighbors with my parents at
that point.
The next morning when we woke up,
him sleeping on the couch as he had done for the past year, I think he thought
my imperative would have slipped away with the darkness. But I meant it.
“I want you out of my house
today,” I repeated, but he didn’t take me seriously.
It took over a week to finally
make a believer of him, but he finally realized that I was dead serious about
wanting him gone. He had hemmed and hawed, and generally not believed me, but
on Wednesday, September 1, in a loud and showy manner, he packed up some
clothes and other items, and announced, as I sat on the bed examining the new
Clarisonic face washing tool my mom had given me, “Well, I guess I’ll go then.” He said it in that way that ten
year olds announce they are running away from home, with plenty of room for
someone to say, “No, don’t go. I really want you
to stay. I’m sorry.”
But I didn’t say anything, other
than, “Okay.”
He walked out of my house that
night, and when the front door closed behind his retreating back, another,
brighter and much more hopeful door opened.
NOTE: There will be no blog post
on Monday, September 2, in observance of Labor Day. Regular posting will resume
on Tuesday, September 3.
Hilton Head image courtesy of http://www.discoverthetrip.com
Shamu image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org
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