As a small child, I overheard my mom and some other ladies discussing how their marriages had lost their “passion.”
The wives went on to talk in low, angry voices about how awful and annoying their husbands were sometimes. Some even openly admitted to “hating” their husbands.
My innocent, child brain couldn’t quite fit the two pictures together: the fairytale romance and happily ever after of movies and storybooks, with the reality of this sort of mid-marriage teeth-gnashing.
Of course, as a woman in my thirties now, with a daughter who is nearly a preteen, I view love very differently: the nuances, the choices, the one thousand shades of grey.
…
Though I’ve yet to marry, I hope to one day.
I’ve long suspected I’d be awful at it, so I began studying the married couples around me in order to gain confidence and wisdom.
I spent a lot of time analyzing and feeling the energy dynamics between married people.
I can tell from almost a mile away which households are filled with tension; which husbands feel hopelessly trapped; which wives are silently drowning, alone.
Normally, I try to keep a relative distance from those moody, tense couples. It feels a bit like walking on eggshells, just being around them and seeing how hard they try to act like it’s all smooth sailing, when it’s not.
Their kids pick up on that tension and embody it too. I see it all the time.
…
I was one of those kids.
As a child, I compared my parents’ tumultuous marriage to the cozy, loved-up images of families on TV, or the happy, perfect-looking families at church or school.
My idea of the “perfect” family, however, wasn’t perfect clothes or a perfect home or even perfectly smiling and understanding parents. That kind of perfection, to me, was a little too on-the-nose, too forced, too self-aware.
To me, the “perfect” families were the ones of which my parents ironically disapproved.
Born and raised to upper-middle-class, pHd touting academics, I felt myself instinctively drawn to the blue-collar, lower-class, red-neck families that were scattered liberally throughout my small hometown in central Iowa.
They ate at chain restaurants, their parents even getting the fancy cocktails with umbrellas and crazy colors. They went to amusement parks. They watched trash TV and read trash magazines and listened to trash music.
There’s a part of me that desperately longs for that type of life for myself, off somewhere in a creaky suburb with a beer-guzzling sports guy for a husband, someone who builds half-assed sandboxes for the neighborhood kids before falling asleep in front of the TV while guzzling beer.
I’ll hate him, at some point. Won’t be able to stand the sight of him or his beer belly or heavy breathing.
But he’ll be mine to hate.
…
Sometimes, the loneliest part of not being married is being hit on by men that are.
Recently, a very close male friend of mine confessed something to me. He’d fallen in love with me, he said. He wanted to leave his wife and be with me.
In my glaring single-dom, I’d become the target of a friend looking to escape his marriage. I sensed that he felt that leaving his (fourth, yes fourth) wife for a single mom would somehow mean that he’s still a decent guy.
As if helping me raise my kid would be a ‘good person’ token for him as well as a welcome escape from married life to a woman to whom he claims he was never attracted.
I told him that I valued our friendship but didn’t see him that way.
In truth, I was offended. I felt violated, almost.
The same refrain keeps going through my mind: He would have never approached me this way if I had a husband of my own.
…
Yesterday, I went to get a long overdue hair trim. Feeling rash, I told the girl to cut off three whole inches.
“Three?” She seemed unsure.
“Yes.”
“Like this?” She pushed.
“Yes,” I said again.
Afterwards, I felt great. Shorter hair made me feel younger, lighter, and less noticeable. Men don’t leer at women with shoulder-length hair, I conjectured. Men respect them.
Hours later, I was miserable. Suddenly, my hair made me feel old and stodgy. Seemingly out of nowhere, I was imagining myself with an impossibly long, silky blowout, the kind that makes men stop and stare.
Some days, I can’t stand to feel the obtrusive male gaze on me.
Other times, I crave it.
…
Yesterday, I woke up to a stream of text messages from a couple different people. One of them was from my best friend since 7th grade, Sara. We still communicate daily via text, always have.
I lay in bed, half-asleep and bleary-eyed, skimming the messages.
Then I shot straight up in my bed, suddenly wide-awake.
“Joe texted me last night,” Sara had written.
They’d almost married a decade ago, but trust issues and unhealed childhood dysfunction drove them apart. He’d since moved far away, and become engaged. We’d assumed he was married by now, maybe even with a kid of his own.
Sara had spent the last decade regretting driving him away. I’d spend the last decade regretting egging her on when she acted out against him.
Turns out, two years ago, Joe’s fiancee had left him a week before their wedding.
A few hours later, in her typically rash style, Sara texted me again.
“I think I’m engaged.”
Knowing Sara’s prior penchant for self-sabotage, I warned her: “Don’t fuck this up.”
But deep down, I don’t worry too much. Sara is still a mess but she’s grown, finally, from a girl to a woman. Hardships and heartbreaks have mellowed us both, imbuing us with wisdom and humility.
Joe and Sara are the real deal. I feel it. And when she calls me to bitch about her man, I’ll be there to remind her how lucky she is.
And then, some day in the future, she can return the favor.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
—
Photo credit: JD Mason on Unsplash