Someone asked me a few days ago what my everyday life was like with Bob. How did he react to my changing beliefs? That sort of thing.

Really, I haven’t really written anything about it because it’s actually quite boring. I have been working on this post for several days, trying to remember the interesting parts. Bob was actually the one who really started me on my journey, as he would bring what he learned in his theology classes home. I did fight it. I fought it hard. We would discuss theology quite often, with stretches of discussion everyday for weeks. These “discussions” often rose to loud arguments.  He had a suffocating need to be right, but in the end, he shot himself in the foot as I realized he was right about my conservative beliefs. He really helped open my eyes to how irrational some of my thoughts were.  I first argued the conservative side, then later, a more liberal one. Bob usually stayed in the moderate range. I hope he is at least smart enough to figure out that he was a major cause in our later marital struggles as I grew very dissatisfied with making my life miserable for principles I no longer believed in. The truth is that he probably would have been better off to allow me to have my conservative beliefs, because they would have kept me pressing on in the ministry and in my marriage with a very different attitude!

A typical argument with Bob would start out as an innocent discussion, escalate into a screaming match, and end with me saying “Whatever, you can be right!” or with me being so tired of screaming that I would simply walk out. He would follow me, however, and I would have to lock the door to get him to leave me alone. Even if I told him he was right, he would keep arguing the point until I was arguing back at him again or felt so beat down that I simply didn’t care anymore. It’s so strange because I believed then and I still do now that it takes two to argue, but I never ever behave like that around anyone else. And at the very last end of our marriage, I realized that it was partially because it was either admit he was right at the beginning or have no say-so in the issue at all. I tried just letting everything slide for awhile, but I felt like I was losing my voice and losing myself. He would pick fights with me about everything, and I do mean everything: did it take 48 minutes to get to school or 52? Was the clock 3 minutes off or 2? And he simply would not let anything go. He had an insatiable need to be right all the time.

I look back, and I think, wow, I thought this was normal: that all married couples fight. And sure, they do, but not like this! I can remember taking a class on abuse for my psychology degree. The final was oral, and I told the professor that I learned a lot in the class, and had even found some characteristics in myself and my treatment of my husband that I didn’t like. I had the problem, it was me. My professor said something reassuring, disbelieving to me, though I can’t remember what it was. I remember finding myself on the verge of tears as I argued with him and told him I was borderline verbally abusive. I don’t think he really knew what to say.

Not that everything was so horrible. He did romantic things: he gave me flowers, massages, drew hot baths with candlelight, cooked, and tried to be romantic for every holiday. But all the gestures felt so empty. I am not sure if it is because he was attempting to go through the motions or if it was because I felt nothing romantic toward him. Maybe both. I know it is what confused myself and everyone else: how could a husband who did all these nice things be bad? When I talked about him to my mother and my friends, those were the parts I talked about. I was taught not to speak ill of your spouse to your family or friends because they wouldn’t be there when the two of you apologized and fixed things. Good advice, but looking back, I carried it too far. My separation came as a terrible shock to everyone, and they assumed some pretty bad things about me, which I was too confused and hurt to correct for many months.

Mostly when I look back, I think of the screaming and yelling. We would scream in the house. We would scream in front of our daughter, something I am still very ashamed of. I tried very hard to not do that, but somehow, it always escalated. When we moved, he screamed at me in the parking lot in front of our apartment complex for everyone to hear, “I just want to beat the shit out of you!” I didn’t scream back that time. I was scared. He even yelled at me for flinching every time he raised his hand, but I stopped screaming. After we split, I stopped screaming at him. I would hang up the phone if he couldn’t speak to me rationally. I would drive away if he started yelling. I decided I didn’t want to be the person to yell anymore, and I wouldn’t take the yelling from him, either.

Looking back, I still believe it takes two to argue, but I don’t really know what to make of the fact that I don’t yell at people like that, ever, whereas he had fights like that with his mother and his ex-girlfriend. Was it me or him? And speaking of his ex girlfriend, he told me when we first got together that his girlfriend claimed that he had abused her after they broke up. We both laughed it off, and I thought nothing of it for the next three years. He never hurt me physically, so I didn’t believe it. But since everything fell apart, I often wonder if there was any truth to what his ex girlfriend said about his abuse. I know him well enough to know that if someone accused him of it, he wouldn’t do it again, anymore than he will try to do to his new wife what he did to me. If he did, then people will know he was lying and that might hurt his reputation! He likes people to think he is the good guy, the victim: his girlfriend lied; I had an affair; he just chooses these horrible women . . . He also prides himself on being manipulative like that, too. I am not accusing him of abusing his ex-girlfriend, just that I find it more believable in hindsight. From what he told me, she herself was quite the piece of work, but then again, he isn’t exactly out making me sound very flattering either. I know I can take credit for the first six months of our marital discord. After we got married, I didn’t know what happened to me. I hated how short my temper was! Then I got off birth control pills. I forgot why I did, but I definitely remember feeling incredibly surprised at how much my mood leveled off and I became “me” again. Turns out, I am one of those rare women that is incredibly sensitive to synthetic hormones, especially estrogen. They make me severely depressed and irritable and give me migraines. After that, however, I don’t really know what happened.

I still find it confusing. I want to learn from my mistakes. I don’t want to make him out to be the bad guy when I had my own flaws. But the truth is that I am uncertain what to say was from him and what was from me. I sometimes wish it was the movies and I would be able to see everything I couldn’t see before, to step outside myself to have a good, impartial view of it. To see my character flaws from the outside instead of trying to sort them out on the inside. Also, I could see things from his perspective- his real perspective, not just the stories he makes up to make himself feel better. I know all those! If this were a movie, I could have resolution: what did he lie about? What did he tell the truth about? Anything? Where did he really go after work?  I don’t know. I don’t suppose I ever will. By now, we both have our sides of the story down pat in our mind. Anything we lied to ourselves about has now become the truth. I doubt either one of us will ever know because memories are faulty. I wish I knew, but maybe I am better off not knowing.

Tags: divorce

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 2:53 am and is filed under Marriage, Divorce, Romance, Memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.