“You and your husband are very different,” says my friend.
“No,” I say. “We’re a lot a like.”
“No,” she says. “He’s nothing like you.”
I thought my husband and I were well-matched. Irish, check. Catholic, check. Extroverts, check. Business majors, check. Importance of family and friends, check, check.
I have a very good friend who saw my truth before I did.
One day I drive to my solo marriage counseling appointment.
“I had an epiphany on the way over here,” I say. If it’s true, my marriage is over.”
“What’s that?” asks my counselor.
“My husband and I don’t have the same values,” I say. “My values are God and family. My husband’s are himself and money.”
My husband was making monetary threats. He referenced himself as the Golden Goose. The self-appointed financial big man on campus told me if I left him he’d make sure there was no money and I’d work for the rest of my life.
It was becoming clear how vastly different we were.
There was no talk of worrying about our children. There was no concern over planning to keep them grounded while their home was potentially changing.
Only two things mattered.
Himself and money. He made that abundantly clear. Divorce wasn’t an unfortunate result of exhausting all of our options. Nor would he take accountability for uncharacteristically drinking and forcing my hand. My children wanted to be away from his behavior.
To this day, I find it hard to comprehend I married someone who didn’t share my value system. How is that even possible? How could it have taken me decades to uncover the truth?
I’m not sure I have the answer.
Yes, he was diagnosed as lacking empathy. Yes, he has a narcissistic personality disorder. I understand how confusing narcissism is. I get why I missed the red flags, made excuses, and stayed with him.
But regardless of narcissism, I should have detected the lack of values.
It was insidious but still obvious.
He had no connection or concern for his family. He didn’t call home or worry about his mom or dad. The visits were initially prompted by me and later by proximity. We owned a beach house near his parents. I was the connector.
He didn’t offer to help a friend move or check on a neighbor.
If asked, he would comply. But nothing within him naturally had any sense of a larger view of the world. He didn’t think or see beyond his own four walls unless a party was involved.
I remember begging him to coach our oldest son. I wanted a father who was involved. He told me he was a busy man and had no time for that. He ultimately relented and went to a soccer meeting. He came home with a completely different attitude. It turns out the guys go to a bar after the meeting.
Suddenly, a party equals a man willing to coach.
Nothing came before him, his schedule, and his work. Not me and not our children. I’m not a pushover and I’m not lacking in self-esteem. I caved because the excuse was always, “I’m self-employed.” The insinuation was there was no one else who could do what he did.
Clearly, there were obvious signs that his foundation was not God or family first. He came first, always. When our marriage began to suffer, I scaled our lives back. I focused on our primary values.
That’s how I was raised.
I prioritized our family time and leaned on my faith. It’s what you’re supposed to do when adversity calls. You’re supposed to concentrate on what’s most important.
I urged him to rely on our spirituality.
I thought it would get us through.
I believed it would boil away the anger. I thought at our worst, he would recognize our problems weren’t that great. We had many blessings. More than most are afforded. Faith is a gauge in our lives. It balances out our problems and reminds us things could be worse.
My husband never sought refuge in the spirituality I thought we shared.
He never prioritized our family.
He continued his self-indulging pity party and drank. I begged him to address his anger and uncharacteristic drinking. The marriage counselor did too. In fact, the therapist told him to go home and tell our children he would never make their world feel unsafe or unpredictable again.
Nearly a year later, we stood in our kitchen.
“Dad,” says my children. “You’re upsetting us and scaring us.”
“I know, boys,” says my husband. “I know I’m behaving badly but it’s your mother, she drives me to it.”
Even then, he couldn’t put family first.
He had to pick himself.
He never did what the marriage counselor told him to do. It’s beyond comprehension especially since he doesn’t have a drinking problem. He was diagnosed with a lack of empathy and told he was angry and it was coming out when he drank.
I knew this.
I knew he wasn’t an alcoholic.
He was reacting to me saying I might leave him.
Money had been a consuming focus from the start. He would refuse to go in on group Christmas presents for his parents. I would have to negotiate to get him to comply with his sisters. In the early years of our marriage, he agreed in exchange for not having to buy me anything.
There were lots of examples of this type of thing. Yet he could pick up tabs which is what I focused on. I didn’t realize that was again tied to the social and financial big man on campus. It bolstered his image and his own values.
He spoke about money regularly.
I dismissed it because we both had business backgrounds, we built a business together and acquired investment properties. It made sense.
My husband and I were very different people. Yet, I walked down an aisle towards someone who felt familiar. A guy who on the exterior interacted with his family and friends. A man who showed up to church on Sunday.
The signs were there.
The absence of values was abundantly clear.
Physically he walked among the world appearing well-centered.
While internally being disproportionately self-centered.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Nihal Karkala on Unsplash
