My Autonomy Threatened Him Most. His goal was to keep me stuck.
He was depressed because I would’t sleep with him. He was depressed because my body was no longer a tool to fix the emptiness inside of himself.
He didn’t know how to love without owning. He couldn’t process love that didn’t come with access and compliance.
My body told me to stop doing everything for him. To stop dancing for his approval. To just stop. Deep down I knew that the reason WHY he was treating me so terribly was because I wouldn’t sleep with him, but I never said it out loud. I never confronted him on it, we never talked about it. It was the subject we both avoided.
Me, because my nervous system wasn’t safe enough to handle the weight of the truth. And deep down I knew time was the only way to get there. I needed to gather strength and self confidence to stand in the truth we were avoiding.
Him, because he knew if he actually said it, it would make him look like a total pig and he saw himself as the good guy. It would have made him accountable, and responsibility was a cancer to him. He liked to shift blame and make everyone else scramble or fold.
I was still his friend, I still did “wife” things, the only thing I didn’t perform was sex. I was reclaiming our friendship, desperate to see if we could cultivate a friendship before anything else started changing. I needed to know, in my bones, that he actually respected me. And I kept digging, turning rocks over, giving him chances and was very present in the hopes that I would see that. Giving this 23 year relationship one last jumpstart sans the physical. I knew this was the last chance to truly see if we were, indeed, compatible or if he was simply using me.
When this first went down, he was kinder in his text messages to me AND he finally kept his phone on throughout the day. He started doing dishes and he started bathing every other night.
I was like, ok… there’s some spark of hope here.
But then he stopped texting, he stopped doing dishes stating that he was too depressed to do them, and then his bathing got less frequent and he stopped using soap. He was just getting wet and toweling off.
And not to diminish depression, but if someone uses their pain to manipulate, guilt or shift blame? That’s not vulnerability, that’s control.
I did not deserve to be kicked out because I was reclaiming my body. He had no right to ask me to leave MY home because he wasn’t getting laid. Especially because of the way he was handling it. Especially because it was all about him, all about control.
He wouldn’t listen to me at all. I might as well have been speaking another language. He just didn’t care. And that is not even in the same galaxy as love and respect… it was becoming so blatantly obvious. I didn’t owe him my body. I don’t care that we were married. He did not own that.
The marriage was STARVED of intimacy, connection, humanity. It was totally, completely emotionally hollow. He was fine with that. He was fine with not knowing me. He was fine with not helping me. He was fine with running and hiding in the bathroom or turning off his phone any time I asked for anything. Why would I want to show him love on his terms? Why would I want to be THE MOST VULNERABLE with a man who couldn’t even listen to me? Couldn’t be bothered with me? Why would I risk getting pregnant for someone who would absofuckinglutely leave if that baby or I got sick? WHY would I risk that? WHY should I have risked that? WHY WERE HIS NEEDS and WANTS more important than MY SAFETY???
“You must have known this before you got married!”
I knew he was having issues with bathing, but the other issues weren’t present at all. And as he had longer access to my body, the more he felt entitled to it. The more I did for him, the MORE he wanted and the more he expected and played dumb when I asked for anything. So… no, I didn’t know. It’s like he was regressing into being a child.
His entitlement and narcissism (you can call it selfishness, but his chronic manipulation and desire to control points to narcissism) made me feel like a prisoner… and the fact that he didn’t see me as a person broke my heart.
And I finally feel safe enough to say all this.
