I’ve deleted this a few times, I’m having a very hard time articulating what I’m trying to say.
So I’m just going to white knuckle it and go…
I was with him for 23 years, for the last 5 years, there was a quiet drumbeat that was getting louder and louder. Something is off, something isn’t right. But I couldn’t put my finger on it, my brain wouldn’t show me the big picture. I have no idea why.
I didn’t want to sleep with him, I didn’t get any of my emotional needs met. I felt totally neglected, but it was familiar. So, I stuck it out. But I was miserable and it was getting progressively worse. I had to disassociate during sex, I started drinking to have sex. His touch made me jump. I just didn’t feel safe with him anymore. He felt like a dangerous stranger. But I couldn’t quite figure it out.
This wasn’t just bored housewife syndrome, not just he forgot my birthday… it was so much deeper than that. I could feel that he didn’t actually like me.
Then there was a moment that my body said no more. Absolutely you aren’t safe here. We need to shut this party down. He let me down in such a big way and was such an absolute asshole about it that I stopped truly caring. I stopped fighting for our marriage. I stopped being warm with him, I stopped being his WIFE and turned into a roommate. It was protection but I STILL didn’t know why.
From what I can tell I was in fight or flight for so long, swimming in cortisol and stress hormones and for whatever reason, you cannot think straight, logically or see reality when you are in this state. You just do what you need to do to survive. Whatever that is. In my case, it was sugarcoating reality. Not letting me see what I was actually living in because the truth would kill me.
God that sounds so dramatic. He wasn’t a lion or a serial killer (that I know of). But my body was just so stressed. I hate saying that because I see myself as a strong person, a person who would stick up for herself and protect herself, What is this protection mode shit??? Why was I fawning??? Why did he feel like a comic book villain all of a sudden????
So, I shut down. No more sex. No more centering him. No more feminine wife shit. I did what I needed to do, but without the pizzazz of giving a fuck about his mental state. You know, the perks of having a woman in your life, besides our vaginas.
And he pouted, he told me to get my hormones checked. He told me I was MEAN. I was neutral. I wasn’t mean. I was neutral. That fucker told me my warmth and kindness was neutral. Nope. My neutral was JUST like he was. Transactional and git ‘er done without any pizzazz. You know, I was a man. I became a man.
So I didn’t put out, I was neutral. He had to go on Prozac. I shit you not. He was so sad about the lack of p*ssy and pizzazz that his doctor gave him drugs. Ok, sure. *AFTER* he told me my pizzazz was instinctual, not needed and lame.
What I am trying to say… I had no idea what my body was doing. It was pantomiming that it wasn’t happy. My brain was NOT listening. It wasn’t following. It was an adorable dachshund bounding around pretending to be a big dog, pretending to be in control… but it wasn’t. My brain was just adorable and stupid and stuck in fight or flight saying things that didn’t make sense, it was just trying to stay safe. Keeping him happy = safe. “Maybe I should go on hormones. Maybe I should just have sex with him”. Etc and so on.
My body was like. No. And if you do, we’ll completely shut down. It actually fucking threatened me with adrenaline spikes and fear.
My ex was pressuring me to go back to the sweet, biddable, mindless, not needy, sex giving doormat that I was. But my body said NO. My body said that any more giving would kill me. It would absolutely kill me. And the more I resisted, the more evil he felt to me. My autonomy, me setting a boundary was showing me who he really was.
And I told him this. It wasn’t my hormones, it wasn’t me. It was HIM. It was how he treated me, how he disrespected me, how he demanded sex, how he did absolutely NOTHING to make me feel good in the relationship. How this marriage had been all about him, his needs, his timing, the changes he needed, the tone he needed… ALL ABOUT HIM. And until this changed, my body was mine and my kindness and extra wifey doting energy was MINE. He didn’t get the best parts of me any more, especially when he didn’t value it or reciprocate at all.
So what did he do? He bought me things. Dumb things. And then in a gesture of showing me he wasn’t hyper sexualizing me, he threw out the lingerie he bought me. And he finally got me a birthday cake, roses on valentine’s day and roses for no reason. And he sent heart emojis for the first time ever.
And he made sure to tell me how jealous the women at the grocery store were when he bought me flowers. “They all look and smile and put their hands on their chest”. Because HE’s NEVER BOUGHT FLOWERS BEFORE you see, the act of buying flowers was so novel and new.
My asshole brain whispered… “those women are just touched that this ugly mother fucker has someone to buy flowers for”.
So, what I am trying to say is that he was pressuring me to go back to being that passive, giving, fool and my brain just kept telling me to agree with him. To mindlessly go back to my old, one-sided life. My brain was a traitor. My brain was trying to stay safe and it was trying to manipulate me back to this jackass.
But my body knew. It hated him.
I held my ground. I told him presents weren’t going to do it. He needed to learn empathy, bathe more than once every 10 days AND use soap (that fucker would performance art in the shower and not use soap) and he needed to help around the house OR OR OR help me come up with solutions to cleaning. All I wanted was an equal brain to help manage the house… honest to Jesus if he didn’t want to clean but would help me hire a little bit of help, that would have been enough. That asshole just wanted to opt out completely and let me hang there.
And one of the most subtlest clues that told me he wasn’t going to authentically change was a nail clipper.
Before sex, he’d trim his nails. That was his foreplay, that was his grooming ritual. Because he didn’t want to scratch me, this was something he was doing for me because he was being thoughtful you see (the hardest eye roll ever right here). Clipping his fucking nails. So, before anything started… he’d go into the bathroom and I’d hear *click* *click* *click*.
It’s a trigger noise, that’s for sure.
I would be laying on the bed, cringing. Not wanting to see his shadow come crawl into the bed next to me because I knew what was next. He would be crawling all over me, but at least his nails were smooth. His body was smelly, his breath was awful… but those nails were smooth as silk. What a guy!
So, we were in that year of being in marriage counseling, day 395 of him not getting laid, But also day 7000 of me asking for the same 3 things… for help, empathy and bathing. This is when he thought giving me gifts and heart emojis would override the same 3 things I had been asking for for 20 years. I stuck to my guns. I still said NO. I repeated myself: I need this or you don’t get my body or me. And I can’t even guarantee that. I just need to see some authentic change.
God, I was such an asshole, huh?
Anyway… he ignored everything I said and he got me some huge elaborate gift (that I didn’t want) and he wrapped it in gift bags. In my favorite color. Cool. He sets them down and then says, wait! I’ll be right back.
He runs upstairs and I heard *click* *click* *click*.
And I knew… this wasn’t a gift for ME. It was a gift to get me naked. It was a gift to get him laid.
My brain finally, fucking FINALLY knew what my body knew. This was ALL performative. He didn’t give a flying fuck about me or putting a smile on my face. He wanted to get my panties off. And he was going to do what HE wanted and not do what I wanted in that endeavor. My words, my very fucking basic requests were still buried. Just like my writing skills on this post.
And the thing that pissed me off the most is that he STILL played dumb. That I couldn’t see through his absolute bullshit show.
ALL of that to say… listen to your body.
It took me another solid YEAR after moving out and living alone for this all to hit me. My brain still didn’t fully comprehend how much of a monster he was. And when it did hit, I had a full meltdown and couldn’t leave the house for 3 months.
And if I would have slept with him, if I would have given in… I would have never seen that. My brain had tricked me to feel safe, had tricked me to give him what he wanted. But my body knew. My body was trying to get me away from him.
I guess I still have a very very hard time talking about it because I’m still missing the point while actively trying to make the point. GIVE YOURSELF TIME. Don’t let him pressure you or rush you. Don’t let your therapist rush you, don’t let your finances rush you, don’t let ANY outside influences rush you… nobody. Nothing. Your body knows what’s up. It will tell you what is wrong when you feel absolutely safe. Give it the time it needs to tell you.
I am having such a hard time explaining this other than… don’t let anyone else tell you how you are feeling. Give yourself time, distance and calm your anxiety down and you’ll finally get the truth. It might take years, but you’ll get it. I had to jump through some major, major hoops to get here. Because my brain wanted to make everything Disneyland. Safe, clean, predictable and FAKE. And in the past feeling safe meant giving. Sacrificing. Making sure everyone else felt ok, no matter what that did to me. My body knew the reality was shitty, but I needed to know… so it kept trying and kept trying until I finally started to listen.
And my truth was… fingernail clipping was the only true courtesy that man was EVER going to give me.
