“Colleen,” said my oldest sister. “Where was your self-respect?”
I had revealed my truth to her. All of the stories I kept hidden from my family and friends because I didn’t want them to hate the man I loved. She was shocked by my husband’s refusal to pick me up from oral surgery.
Our mother raised us with self-respect. It’s why I remember the words my sister spoke all those years ago. I had a degree of moxie. I wouldn’t tolerate being treated poorly by a man.
But it took an engagement to reveal this side of him. I disregarded it. I blamed it on wedding planning. Lots of couples argue during the stress of organizing the big day.
I was unaware our dynamic was shifting.
My self-respect evaporated with vows. I would have run if we’d still been dating. During the first few years of marriage, I experienced a cold and cruel man. One I had never met.
But the church, the marriage license, and till death do us part kept me there.
In a tormenting cycle of emotional Yin and yang.
It’s baffling to me as a divorced adult. The invisible bond grounded in my faith made me believe I should stay. Twice a year my world would be turned upside down. It typically revolved around something that was important to me.
The few times I needed my husband and asked for something.
He used to say, “You’re a big girl. I’m a big boy. I don’t ask anything of you and you don’t ask anything of me.” He was unwilling to do anything he did not want to do. I revolved around his work and his life.
It was easier to acquiesce. To do things by myself. Take our baby to ear surgery alone. Paint the walls he refused to paint. Have my friend’s husband paint the dresser for the nursery. Drive me home from surgery.
Whatever it was I figured it out alone.
I always say I never married the man I dated for nearly six years. One time I asked my husband why he had never shown me this side of him. How he could be this great guy who was equally cold and cruel.
“Oh,” he said. “I was in camouflage.”
It’s frightening to marry a man I didn’t know. Even worse, to abandon my self-respect. I stayed despite knowing something was terribly wrong. When I should have run for the door.
But I had made that vow.
And I favored his charming side.
I cried myself to sleep many nights. A young girl in her twenties who thought she had married the love of her life. But encountered an empathy-lacking stranger.
I regained myself and did leave after eight years. I packed my children up and moved in with my sister. About a month later, my husband convinced me to return if he agreed to marriage counseling. It was a bandaid but the narcissist was smart enough to wear camouflage throughout it. He couldn’t sustain it and I went to leave again.
Talked out of it once more I stayed.
All those years and wasted tears. Despite realizing something was terribly wrong when we married. I knew myself. I had too much self-respect to allow a man to treat me that way.
A vow made me stay married.
If we were dating I would have run.
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Photo credit: Alonso Reyes on Unspalsh
