I remember growing up watching my parents "communicate". It was a frustrating process at best. Not one in which I was particularly looking forward to and yet I was determined that I would not make the same mistakes that my mother did. Mistake number one - marry a man who seemed to be devoid of emotion. Mistake number two - spend the rest of my life wishing that he would all of a sudden get some emotion. Mistake number three - expecting on a daily basis that in a flash that emotion would appear and be directed completely and totally at her like a lovesick puppy that just woke up from years in a coma.
So to combat that problem I did this - did not marry anyone like my dad. Then what did I proceed to do the rest of my life .... decide to punish him for not being my dad. Even before we married, he showed an amazing lack of self control over his emotions. Based on the beginning of this post you would think that I would jump for joy over this fact. But I did not. It scared the living hell out of me. I was powerless to hide that fact from him. So he learned to keep his emotions tucked away in his head but they still wiggled their way out. More on that later I'm sure. So why didn't I learn from my parents marriage? Who knows?!?! It boggles my mind that I still expect my husband to be just like my dad and that I resent him for not being that. Does the poor man have a chance in the world?
18 years later, we are at an impasse. I no longer want to try. He will not admit failure. The economy is so bad that we cannot part. Last, but not least, now there are 4 children involved, one with a disability.
Boy would I love to blame it all on him! Wouldn't we all? I will say that I have tried every single possibility that I could think of over the years including completely trashing my pride down to nothing so that we can start anew each time. I'm sure there are still many things that I can try still, but I don't want to think of any more ways. It's exhausting and unfruitful. It appears to me that it will do no good because of lack of success in the past.
His solution? For me to drop weight. From day one it has been his agenda. I weighed a little over 130 when we married. He says now that he was wrong about this but as a blushing bride, he told me that I was obese. That word has a tendency to evoke strong self hatred. It was a word not used often in our marriage but always there. Always there because of other "kinder" words that were used. There is no need to spell them out. A reader needs only to use his imagination to think of the many.
I was raised to believe that any man worth having would respect me for my contributions to society in the form of rational thinking, spirituality, thoughtfulness and morality. Apparently after 18 years, the obesity still triumphs. So in my mind, the question begs to be asked, "Is this man worth fighting for if his core values are so different from my own?" At this moment, we are roommates with occasional benefits.
