I was in my twenties and newly married. I sat on my bedroom floor, leaning against the bed with the phone to my ear. I cried for my best friend on the other end of the line. She was the only person I was willing to tell my secret to.
“He won’t talk to me,” I said. “He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter what I tell him. He’s so cold and cruel.”
She heard.
There’s not much she can do.
I made her an unwilling recipient of my tears. I put her in a conflict situation but I wasn’t fully aware of this because we were kids and I considered her one of my best friends. But she was my sister-in-law.
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I called her out because I couldn’t let my family and friends know about it or else they would hate it.
“He looks like Kennedy,” my aunt said. “He’s a great guy.”
Everyone shared her feelings. I was dating an incredibly wonderful man. We met in college when I was 19 and he was 20. I was about 25 when we got married. I thought I knew my college sweetheart. But I didn’t.
This was one of many calls I had with my sister-in-law.
It was my only outlet and my only escape.
I couldn’t stand all the coldness and cruelty my husband threw my way.
It was irrational and maddening. He stayed out all night and came back in the morning and then told me I had no right to be mad at him. He could play cards and not go home. He proceeded to not talk to me for three weeks because how dare I get mad at him.
Another time he asked me. What’s the big deal if he leaves me at the bar? The other men thought it was funny to leave and leave all the women there with no way home. It was all good fun. My husband once again began to shift the anger at his mistakes onto me.
My husband sent a very clear message.
He said it the morning I was up all night waiting for him to come home.
“How dare you talk to me like that. How dare you get mad at me.”
“Any woman would be crazy,” I said. “Husbands don’t come home all night. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night worrying that something has happened to you.”
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My husband never sent this message while we were dating. It started right after we got married.
“I brought home the wrong thing from the grocery store,” I said.
“Never get angry with me,” he said. “If you want something, go to the store and get it yourself.”
I was amazed by my husband’s reaction. I didn’t recognize the man in front of me. My boyfriend never talked to me that way. He had never been so arrogantly cold and cruel. After our engagement, I started to notice a slight change in him, but it wasn’t like that.
I would describe it as more cold than cruel.
One time I asked him to go with me to the flower seller, but he refused. I pleaded with him saying that since my mother was ill, I had to plan the entire wedding by myself and I wanted her to be my company. My husband said he is a busy man and has work to do. But the appointment was in the evening because I was also working.
It doesn’t matter.
I had to go alone.
For the first few years of marriage, my husband confused me and I cried.
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The man I dated filled me with laughter, but the man I married filled me with tears.
It’s gotten worse. The message was clear. I couldn’t be angry with him for anything and I couldn’t ask him for anything.
If the car needed to go to the store, it did. If the wall needed painting, I had it done. If the drywall needed repair, I had to have my girlfriend’s husband do it. The kids’ wardrobe had to be painted by my friend’s husband as well. I couldn’t get in the way of my husband, his work, or what he wanted to do.
If I needed to be picked up from surgery he said no.
If I wanted my childhood cat to live with us he said no.
If I wanted him to go with me to the hospital when our son had surgery, he said no.
It doesn’t matter how big or small it is. How normal or abnormal his reaction was. dont care. He would get angry at me for influencing his day or trying to. He didn’t feel anything.
He watched me cry so hard I would get bruises on my face.
It is not normal to have a husband who says he is too busy to pick up his wife and newborn baby from the hospital because he left when the baby was born. But nothing my husband did was normal or normal.
It is not normal for a neighbor to insist that your husband accompany you when you welcome a new child into your family. Because he’s angry because his OBGYN asked him to cancel his appointments the day I was induced. He had to get revenge on someone who told him what to do.
It is not normal for your husband to refuse to accompany you when you are undergoing anesthesia for oral surgery. It was even unnatural for him not to wonder how she got home that day. It’s not normal for a man to get angry and you can’t go on a business trip with him because your mother is dying. It is even abnormal for this man to respond by saying, “Your mother has been dying forever.” It is not normal for a man not to cry when his dog sleeps. It’s even less normal when it’s that guy’s family dog.
There are too many examples I have of what is abnormal and what is less normal to share.
It’s the shocking truth of narcissism.
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