Wait ’til the party’s over, hold tight, we’re in for nasty weather…
I know you were reading my emails. I know you were checking my search history in my emails. I know you were watching me. Maybe I deserved to be observed? Maybe you justified it even though I had never been on your computer or phone even once. I never checked on you… what were you hiding? I wonder that every day now. I have a few ideas now that I am away and see the patterns.
That’s why I write this now. Because I’m fairly certain you are watching. So, this letter will stay here and I will edit it as I think of more things. I finally feel like I see the reality of our relationship and dynamic. I see it clearly. You were emotionally abusive not autistic. I was so stressed and so disassociated that I wasn’t able to process anything while we were together, while we were in marriage counseling, while I was talking to that other dude. I was so checked out, I just wanted to feel safe and heard and I gave you grace and tried explaining things in so many different ways trying to reach you. I thought you cared, but you just didn’t understand. Nope. You were trying to control me and my body knew it before my brain did. I felt like a husk of myself for so long. Pure cortisol and other stress hormones. It was just getting progressively worse.
You would talk, wear me down, try to logic your way out of things, try to prove that I was stupid, try to prove that your reality was valid and mine was not. You you you. Meanwhile, I had to do everything in the house, all the paperwork, all the repairs, all the chores… and you got to do whatever you wanted. That was it, wasn’t it? You wanted ZERO responsibility for anything, but you wanted sex. That is NOT a partnership or relationship, that made me your servant. Can’t you see that?? Can’t you see how that was sheer disrespect, kicking me in the face. Letting me drown and telling me that I should stop kicking and drown because the kicking was annoying to you.
You were my best friend. We had so many inside jokes, memories, adventures, stories… 23 years and you were there with me experiencing it all, growing up together. That’s almost half of my life. With you. I trusted you. I confided in you. I thought you cared about me.
I wear this crown of shit, upon my liar’s chair. Full of broken thoughts, I cannot repair…
I wish we could have communicated better. (upon reflecting… I don’t think there was anything I could have done. You willfully wanted to misunderstand and make me feel crazy. You didn’t care if I was heard or if I was struggling. All you cared about was your autonomy and not being told what to do STOMP STOMP. So, fuck this idea of me wishing we could have communicated better… I tried. I killed myself trying to reach you. BUT YOU DIDN’T WANT TO BE REACHED). I was so frustrated to be met with animosity, stonewalling, indifference and anger every single time I asked for help, softness or understanding. Or love! I couldn’t even get that. I felt like a burden, a problem, something to ignore. I could never depend on you. I had to learn how to have redundancies that didn’t even involve you. All I wanted was to be heard, to have a partner I could rely on. To feel like I was in a relationship, to feel like I had a husband.
You could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down, I will make you hurt
Things would be shitty, then we’d have a fun friend weekend of video games and pizza. So I’d feel okay again. I was trained to know that as long as I didn’t come to you, things were ok. As long as I didn’t have any needs, including needing comforting, our relationship would go smoothly.
I didn’t want to bother you, involve you or stress you out. I did everything I could to shelter you from the mundane. I thought that one day you’d realize all I had done and you’d thank me. But I was wrong. You told me that my labor and efforts were because I was a woman, it was my instincts, like a beaver building a dam. And you don’t thank a beaver.
I wish I would have known more about your belief system, your values. Specifically how you thought of me, my body, my labor, my place in your life. I have a sneaking suspicion that you saw yourself as better than, smarter than, more entitled than… you were above me and I owed you my body. I was your WIFE after all. You never saw my mind, my heart, my humanity. You never recognized how smart I was in my own way.
She looks like the real thing. She tastes like the real thing. My fake plastic love. If I could be who you wanted, all the time.
We never really talked about it, but I felt the pressure. I felt your resentment building towards me if I didn’t put out. It made me feel like a piece of garbage. To give in, I drank. I should have addressed it. I should have made you tell me your opinions, I should have gotten the truth out of you. You staring at those young women, you denying that. You stalking college campuses with your camera. How fucking obvious. Instead of calling you out on ANY of this, I absorbed the disgust I had for you in a bottle of wine. I should have left. I wish I would have left.
The only thing that works for me… help me get away from myself.
Did you love me? I feel like you loved me like a child might love their nanny. As the thing that takes care of them. The thing that comforts you. The thing that’s on payroll. The thing that you are better than and it can be fired at any time. A thing that is paid to CARE about YOUR needs and you don’t have to care about her, know her birthday or care if she’s crying or hurt. She’s just the nanny. The help.
Sometimes I hear my voice, and it’s been here… Silent all these years…
I remember you saying that you didn’t think women could love men. And I looked at you like, WTF. And it dawned on me. You think SEX is love, you think being loved unconditionally like a mother would love a child was love. You didn’t understand that the love between a man and woman was absolutely conditional. You thought you should be able to treat me however you wanted and I needed to take it. Not complain, love you through it like a mother loves her spoiled little boy (Cartman?). You didn’t see my countless hours of chores, labor, etc as a show of love. How I didn’t engage and argue with you nonstop. I just absorbed it, I knew you wouldn’t listen to or help me, so I absorbed how little you cared about my experience of feeling completely neglected and alone with all the chores in that huge house. I wish I would have known that you had zero respect for me before I did 20 years of labor.
You make me perfect. Help me become somebody else.
The only time I may have felt like an equal in your eyes was the first year we were dating. You know, the year you quit smoking, the year you bathed regularly… you put in effort because you were pursuing me. My mom said that every time she turned around, you were on our doorstep. You were just showing up and you were relentless. I’d never encountered that before.
But that FIRST time you said you were leaving because you weren’t getting enough sex, that you were going to move in with C & B, you shamed me for not having enough sex with you. And we were dating? Were we even an actual couple? Maybe. But I hate myself for not leaving then. It was, what, 2001/2002? I should have known you and your friends saw women as only good for their wet bits. I should have known. I stayed for some twisted loyalty I was shamed into by my mother, “you stay even if you hate it”. But I HATE myself for not seeing that glaring, waving red flag. And you did this again in 2023! You gave me some line that me not sleeping with you and living under the same roof was too stressful to you because you knew there was a person in the house who “thought you were broken”. So I asked if you wanted me to leave and you said yes. I think it was 1 in the morning? So I packed my shit, the dog and I never came back. Because of sex. Because you didn’t get what you wanted. But I NEVER got what I wanted. EVER.
And later, when our marriage counselor asked what you loved about me and you said “this feels like a trap”. Then you later read me 3-4 pages of your journal and it was a word salad detailing my boobs, me walking around in a t-shirt, my orgasms, more about my boobs… you have to know that was a monument to how you objectified me. You have to see it. Unless you were trying to recreate that John Mayer hidden sexist “your body is a wonderland’ song, I was horrified. I was terrified of your inner world. If it was like that. My life was crumbling around me. Everything I thought I believed about our relationship was going up in smoke. I felt totally blindsided by your confessions and your admissions gave me panic attacks. I was your plaything, I was there for your pleasure, I was there to validate that you were a man. But you had no idea who I was. Just like Moose said.
I believed I was building a life, a future… but maybe I was living in the illusion, too. I’d never lived in a middle to upper class cul de sac with other intact families. And a yard! I wanted that so bad, and maybe I made it fit. Maybe I played the game to feel like a valuable member of society. But when the curtain was pulled back and it was all about “if a penis was going into a vagina” (remember that talk?)… my whole world went up in flames. But I didn’t know it yet. I was still holding on to the illusion. For WAY too long. I believed our friendship would carry us and maybe, just maybe… we’d both GROW UP and figure it the fuck out.
And you may find yourself, living in a shotgun shack… well, how did I get here?
I thought you were on the spectrum, so I made excuses for how you treated me. You had Alexithymia, you couldn’t recognize my emotions or your own. I tried to be gentle for years. No matter how I handled it, even if I was crying in sadness, you were still an asshole. You treated me with disregard, disrespect… you were combative yet also played victim. Remember the gavel? That’s not a gesture that a victim would have done. A victim? You ALWAYS got your way. You rarely had to lift a finger. You so rarely did what I asked. Don’t you see that? You took ZERO accountability for your actions and you were always scrambling to blame someone else.
You said you were a “people pleaser”? Wouldn’t you have to please people to call yourself that? Who were you pleasing? Who was getting this benefit on the back of your labor? I must know.
I was so hopeful when you got into therapy. If you would have been honest with her, disclosed everything and your responsibility in it, took accountability, I think you could have healed SO much about your childhood and yourself. Sadly though, you liked being the victim, you liked that a woman was giving you sympathy and comfort. I’m fairly sure you didn’t give her the big picture. And I think you did that because you have things to hide. I’m starting to put the tiny bits of information together to see that there was something going on in you that you were hiding. I’m sorry you have to hide. If it’s something dark, I hope you get help for it.
And I get it. Your parents emotionally neglected you, they were absolutely shitty. You told me if I was hurt by how you treated me, that I should take it up with them. So, I’m here to validate that right now.
Your mom was severely bipolar. Severely. And the time and the place for women having depression and being massively overmedicated with Lithium is well-documented, it’s like she was part of a big experiment. Yes, she was bipolar, but if you put on your empathy hat, she had ZERO support. Your dad saw her as a baby machine and she should be more like his mother (selfless, workhorse, not emotional, not expressive) and your mom’s mom was awful. She was worse. And then later with the shame of PPD and the whole family getting involved to step up and help, but your dad didn’t take a kid?? Come on now, you have to see what a shitty situation this was. For your mom and especially for you. Neither of you got true care or empathy in that entire situation. I know you have deep wounds about not having a mother comfort you, hold you, protect you and give you feminine energy… I can see how much pain you were in for that. And your mother was wildly inappropriate (insulting outbursts in public, those nightgowns she wore) and you were embarrassed, confused and I’m sure this had a huge impact on how you saw women… HUGE. I hope you’ll address this. I hope you will heal from this. Your mother, much like mine, was simply not equipped to take care of children and you beared the brunt of it. I was the one that told you that. I was the one that was worried about you and brought it up. I’m the one that noticed and empathized with you. I was never the enemy. I cared deeply about your mental state. Always. And I blamed your mom for years, too. We all did. But look at how she was treated, look at how she tried to fit into the mold in that religion. Look at how cold your father was with her. And she was so drugged and checked out and had to sit and catalog STAMPS to keep her mind occupied or whatever. What a miserable existence. You have to see that, you must see that.
And your dad, as generous as he is, he was awful to you, too. He was trying to get you to comply, conform and be the son he envisioned, not realizing you were not the one. You were so headstrong and smart and nobody knew what to do with you. He was demanding you get in line and not once, not even ONCE did you do it. And then you did that to me. You weren’t going to comply, you weren’t going to let me “control” you and so here it is, playing out again. You’ll drop out of school, you won’t do what you are supposed to do (as a teenager and as a husband), you won’t listen, you won’t help… you’ll say no to absolutely everything that is asked of you. Why? Because you KNEW that your dad didn’t see you as a human. He didn’t see YOU. He saw a blemish because you weren’t him. As smart and jeopardy-ready as he was, he wasn’t that smart. You get that, right? He wasn’t great with people, he lived in a surface world filled with fart jokes and having 3 emotions. And you might hate me saying this, you were like your mom. You weren’t like your sister and your dad. So he took everything out on you. He was going to blame you for everything and strong arm you into being HIS son. And that is the opposite of wise, it’s terrible. Awful. Ridiculous. Rigid and myopic. I say all this to say… nobody saw YOU, your gifts, your extreme intelligence and your massive desire for autonomy. I’m sorry nobody truly saw that or you. And I know you chased his approval. And I’m here to say, you never needed it. His view of the world is SO small and shallow… you shouldn’t have given his respect an ounce of thought.
There’s always a siren, singing you to shipwreck… Steer away from these rocks, we’d be a walking disaster.
But, anyway… I miss your friendship. I am actively mourning our friendship. I loved you deeply as a friend. I’ll see a video or movie and start crying because I want to share it with you. We had the same sense of humor, we enjoyed the same things. It’s such a fucking shame. I wish we would have just been friends. I wish we would have never been more than friends. Because I will sincerely miss you as a friend. We made fun things together. We had great experiences. But for some reason, for some unknown reason, the second, the moment we got married… you treated me like garbage. You were absolutely my best friend until we said I do at that shittastic drive thru in Las Vegas. That’s a fucking omen.
You were a fucking horrible husband and I wish you saw that.
I would have said “If only he would have respected me, I would have put out and saved the marriage” and now I realize it was impossible. You didn’t respect me. I accept that now. And I’ll never know why. Your programming to believe women were less than? I wasn’t smart enough? I didn’t dote on you enough? I didn’t worship and center you like your grandma (You said she was the only one who ever respected you)? I finally got fed up and said “What the hell is wrong with you?” I dared to push back, I dared to have a voice? I’ll probably never know. I’ll never know why you didn’t soften and show me that you cared about more than I could give you, which was my body and my labor. I thought it was because you couldn’t express it, but the truth is, you never felt it. You never truly cared about me. That’s why you couldn’t show it. AND I’m starting to realize your idea of how women should love men is really distorted. I think you expected me to make up for your shitty mom (you even said that, remember?) and not only did I not know what that really meant, I knew in that moment that my hope of having an equal, adult partner was dead. It was completely dead. My life was completely set on fire in this moment. All hope was lost. You wanted “a mom”, not me. Do you know how much that hurt me to my core? All those years, wasted. All those years desperately trying to get you to see how much you were hurting me so deeply. What a waste of energy.
And, elephant in the room, your hoarding. Your spending. You spent all the money, cool, it’s yours, bro. I get it. I didn’t fight you on it. I just kept asking you to liquidate assets to pay for your distractions. And I know your spending was cathartic to you, it was comforting. But I enabled it. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to shame you or hurt you. But $10k a MONTH? I should have blown up copies of the credit card statements and put it on your pillow. I failed you. I failed by staying quiet, by letting it happen. AND, in the end, I didn’t get as much money because you blew through the savings, the money market, your inheritance, every dime of your paycheck. So when you think I was here for the money, to squeeze you dry, take you for everything… false. So false. You spent it all on plastic cameras and other equipment. ’twas not I. But again, I was an enabler BUT I didn’t want to fight you on that. Because, I was taught if I DID fight you, it would get worse. The spending would get worse or something else would happen. Staying quiet and freezing seemed to be my M.O. by this point. AND I wasn’t a spender. I got us out of debt in 2008/9. I clipped coupons and cooked at home and we bought that place. You even said to me that I never spend on myself. You knew it. You knew that I wasn’t there for your money. And ALL of my inheritance, all 200K+ of it, went back into our life, that house. I took so little from you, financially, and I let you spend how you wanted because I didn’t believe it was my place to tell you what to do with it. But now I wished I would have been more selfish and greedy because it fucked me in the end.
And I know I did a bad thing… but the damage was done a full year prior to my transgression. But it’s my fault for not finding the courage and the words to leave. And I sincerely apologize for what I put you through. I should have handled it so differently. But silver lining, you didn’t have to pay alimony! You got your wish. Just like you said many years ago, “alimony is for losers. I won’t ever pay that”. You got your wish. I’ll tip the forty for you.
We are accidents, waiting, waiting to happen.
P.s… I want to forget the last 25 years of my life. Completely. I don’t want the pictures on that hard drive you said you spend time putting together. I don’t want to remember any of it, look at it, reminisce about it. Because from where I’m sitting now, that life was horrible. It was me running a marathon to get you to respect me. And I NEVER reached the finish line. YOU always won, you always got your way, you were always in control, you were always superior to me and cast a fucking shadow over me. I don’t want to remember that. So, delete, burn etc those pictures. I’m ashamed of all the good, sweet, joyful things I brought into your life. I made that house a home. I put my heart into it and you’ll NEVER appreciate that, you just want to pee on it and consume it. Because you wanted control and dominance and to never ever be questioned or challenged. You brought me misery and decay. Maybe I learned a few things about keyboard shortcuts or how to save an image the right way, maybe some HTML… otherwise? Survival. Those years with you were all about surviving you and wasting my energy.
You could have been the love of my life, if you wouldn’t have treated me like shit.
Here is a list of the things I’ve seen since we went no contact that I wish I could have shared with you:
Movies I know you’ll like for very specific reasons:
- When you get to it, you are going to LOL like crazy: The Fall Guy Movie
- I laughed so many times, so many great references & beautifully shot: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- Very dark, very sad, subtle messages, puppets… raw: Anomalisa
Videos that made me think of you:
P.s… look under the island.
P.s.s… I was never trying to change you. I was trying to get you to respect me.
