I'm sure my parents must have fought with each other. They were married for over 60 years, they raised a lot of kids, some of them more difficult than others. They both had tempers but different flavors. My mother was a quick short fuse. She would get mad, spark at you, then was over it. My father was a slow long burn. It took a lot to get him mad but once he was mad he didn't get over it quickly, if at all.
They also came from very different backgrounds. When we were visiting my mother the year she died she told us a story about her mother reacting to someone basically calling my father's family white trash. Now they, by definition, probably were, but my grandmother was having none of it. "Marshall is a lovely boy, very responsible, I'm proud that Ruby is going to marry him." It made me think highly of my grandmother and gave me more of an insight into my dad as well. I knew he had been the responsible adult in his family from about the time he hit double digits, his dad was an alcoholic and my grandmother was a bit of a mess but in a totally different way. Dad worked and supported the other kids. My mother grew up on a working farm. Her oldest sister was the favorite child and was treated as such. She and my Aunt Dorothy talked about resenting it, but dealing with it.
Different backgrounds so they had to have fought. At least at first.
I came into their lives when they had already been together for 16 or 17 years. By the time I have very many memories at all of them as a couple it was at least 20 years into their marriage. They had figured some things out by then. But still...we were broke. Everyone worked a lot. All of the time. And, as I mentioned, some of us were challenging kids to raise.
But I never saw them fight. Ever.
So my assumption was that a good marriage was between people who never fought.
Yeah...well...
Brent and I got married at 18. I always said I had the worst of my parent's blend. I was a hot head with a short fuse who held a grudge. Brent's parents fought all the time. For fun. Arguing and being snarky to each other wasn't a bad thing, it was their way of communicating. They didn't take it personally. I was not used to this type of communication. At all. And for Brent his actual angry stance is leaving the room. He doesn't want to say something he can't take back. He doesn't want to ever cross that line, since it was crossed in his house growing up and he hated it. That didn't work for me. I wanted him to argue with me, hash it out and move on. It took us awhile to figure out how to balance it.
It still is a challenge at times, not going to lie. But now I know that he's not giving me the silent treatment when he's angry (and to be clear it's not even angry at me, it's frustrated with the world and he doesn't want to take it out on me) he's not punishing me, he's protecting me in the best way he knows how.
I know that now.
But when we were first married it would just make me angrier. And then it would shut me down. I stopped telling him when things were upsetting me. I figured it was on me to figure it out. My parents never fought so clearly we should not fight. And because I knew this, it was up to me to swallow down anything that might lead to a fight and just deal with it.
Which works really well.
I mean, it doesn't. Not at all.
There were two times in our marriage that I knew for a fact it was over and one more where I wasn't sure, but it didn't look good. Brent might have more or different times. But I have three.
And all three started from the same place and were due to not dealing with an issue but just pretending it would go away. In fact I could make a case for the second and third times being directly related to the first. Because I never, we never, dealt with the problem. You can do that with some things, and you can't do that with others. It's tricky sometimes to figure out which type of problem is which.
The first time was about 8 years in to the marriage. Brent had just gotten out of the Navy. He hadn't found a job yet and we were living with my parents. I had gone back to work through a temp agency and we were at a company Christmas party. I wanted to dance and he wouldn't. I thought, "If someone asks me when I knew my marriage was over, this will be the moment." Sounds horrible right? That I would mark the end of my marriage because he wouldn't dance with me? It wasn't the dancing. It was that I felt like he didn't love me anymore. That he didn't want to spend time with me. That he resented me. He was so angry all the time and I just couldn't deal with it.
Did I mention he had just gotten out of the Navy, hadn't found a job yet and we were living with my parents?
See, when we were planning on him leaving the Navy everyone was getting these great jobs with great pay. We could leave, I could still stay home with Katie and we would have more money and no more 6 month cruises. Then right before he got out the economy tanked. Bottomed out. Instead of a few weeks with his parents as we decided where to go, we ended up living with them for a month, then up to Albuquerque to live with my folks so I could get a job easier. The whole reason Brent joined the military was so he could support us. So we could get married and stay together. His parents had told him it was a mistake and he needed to go to college so he could have a real career. Now here we were, and Brent felt like a failure. He had no job, unemployment and detachment pay were going to run out, I was back at work, we were living with my parents.
Looking back I can see this all really clearly. I can also see that there was absolutely nothing I could have done to make it better for him. I couldn't come sweeping in from the future and let him know that in a couple of weeks he was going to interview with Intel through their veterans hiring initiative and get a job that would lead to a "real career." That he wasn't anywhere close to being a failure. That his wife didn't view him as such even right then, she was just getting quieter and quieter because she wanted you to not be angry.
But at the time? I was just hurt. I didn't understand why he was so angry. I mean, I obviously knew it was hard, but I grew up broke. I grew up in a family where everyone worked. Where if someone was laid off, someone else picked up an extra shift until things got better. It was fine. Brent viewed it as a time he wasn't holding up his end of the bargain and I just wanted him to see it was our burden not his. But since I couldn't talk to him about it, I just kept pushing those hurt feelings down until that moment when he wouldn't dance with me at a party and I thought, well that's it then. He doesn't even love me anymore.
Then he got the job with Intel, things started to get better financially and that stress lifted.
But we never talked about it. I never told him how much it had upset me to be shut out like that. I just squashed it and resented it.
Fast forward a few years and he is working and going to school to get his bachelor's degree. It was hard. I worked full time, he worked full time and went to school. It was such a stressful time. Then finally we were at the end of it. A break! We got transferred to Colorado Springs which was less expensive than where we had been living in Oregon and I would be able to go to part time work and we could take a breath.
Then the house in Hillsboro didn't sell. I hated Colorado Springs. And Brent went back to school. Again. I can remember the phone call when he told me he wanted to get his Master's Degree. I told him I understood that it would help him at work but that I really needed at least a year breather before he did it. There was a long pause then he let me know he had already signed up for classes.
Now, again, looking back from where I am I can see it all pretty clearly. It was a program through work, just like his bachelor's degree had been. An opportunity to get an advanced degree without the college debt. A chance to further his career instead of stalling out at the level he was at. I was working part time so I had the space in my schedule to pick up the parenting slack, and honestly I was already handling most of that since he was working 70 hours a week or so. It was too good to pass up and I would clearly see that.
I did not.
I do now, but I did not at the time. I was furious. I was living in a city I hated, stressed about the expense we took on having the house in Hillsboro not sell for so long. Trying to shuffle Katie around to all of her extra curricular activities and doing it all by myself. The whole reason I didn't want to have kids until he got out of the Navy was that I didn't want to be a single parent and it felt like he was asking me to be a single parent. But, it was already done. So I swallowed it down and took care of things.
With a huge dose of resentment.
And he was stressed during that stretch. I was clearly tense the whole time, he was working insane hours and going to school. Katie was having some adjustment issues (odds are she was picking up how tense I was and reflecting it through her own behavior).
Then I told him I wanted a divorce.
He was not expecting it.
He had just gotten transferred back to Oregon. He was this close to finishing his degree. Life was finally going to relax again. And I wanted out.
As soon as I asked I regretted it.
I knew it was a mistake and that I didn't want to be without him. I just didn't want to be in the life we were currently living. It was too hard. I was too miserable. I wanted him, I just didn't want that.
He took me back. But we didn't deal with the issue. We didn't talk about all of it. I took the blame since I was the one who asked for a divorce. I carried the guilt of shattering his trust that I would always be there. I made promises to change some things I was doing but took all of the fault.
With a lot of resentment.
Oddly enough, that didn't work.
It took a few years for it all to blow up again, but it did blow up again. I have the worst blend of my parent's tempers; short fuse long grudge. I had never worked past the first round of hurt from ten years earlier, and now I was trying it ignore all of the shit I had piled on top of that.
But that last time? When it really looked like we might not make it through? Because I had already left once, I knew if I left again it would be for good. And I knew that I didn't want to leave. Not really. I wanted to fix what was broken between us and stay. So we did something weird and talked about it. What we each needed from the other. What worked and what didn't. And then we did the work. The little and big things that are important to each of us. We know what works and what doesn't for the other one and we try to make sure we are doing the right combinations.
Because even when things were bad, we still liked each other. We still had a good friendship. And when you are looking at losing your best friend as well as your spouse? Well you do what you can to not have that happen. And to do it without resentment.
That's the key.
My parents never fought that I know of. So I never learned how to do it well. I just learned how to keep quiet and resent the fact that I wasn't getting what I needed. I don't recommend that.
We still argue, not often, but it happens. He still leaves the room when he's mad. I still would rather hash it out and move on. But now we both know that there are some things you can just let slide, and some things you need to deal with.
And he's still my best friend.
And I will always be grateful he took me back when I left. And I will always be grateful he did the work with me when I stayed.
No comments:
Post a Comment