If I could give just one piece of advice to someone who is miserable, it would be to keep a journal. It is hard to see the overall picture of your interactions with others, if you don't remember the past. I have attempted journal writing for several years, but a year before I left my ex-husband I began keeping a journal in earnest. I tried to write something at least once a month for three years. I cheat now. I realized that I have been telling my friends about my life through emails and so now I save copies of those emails and compile them into a personal history archive.
Once or twice a year I reread what I wrote. By doing that, I've been able to identify destructive tendencies in myself and the others around me. Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it and many of our personal interactions span much more than a single day. If I just lived day by day, I would never see the patterns in my ex-husband's actions. It was only be recording it and going back over that I began to see what he was doing. When I told a couple of my close friends what I found, they told me it wasn't my imagination - they had seen it too.
Did I miss it because I was stupid or blind? No. I missed it because I had too many other things to think about and children to take care of. So, by just recording events and some of my impressions, I created a record that, when I finally could sit down with and look over without any pressing needs, allowed me to see the big picture.
Interestingly enough, while going through some of my other stuff, I found a couple notebooks from my previous attempts at journal writing and I was shocked to find that it wasn't my imagination - my ex-husband had been sabotaging me for a long time. I found that every time I began to get everything running smoothly, he found a way to disrupt my schedule. They were very insidious ways too. By themselves, they were innocuous - but for so many of these interruptions to always happen after I began to feel good about myself was stretching the realms of probability way too much.
I talked to a trusted in-law about it and they confessed that my ex-husband had been telling his family that he was staying with me for the kids for about four years before this realization hit me. We suspect that subconsciously he was either trying to drive me away or was hoping I would commit suicide.
I have known people who swear that the past has absolutely no bearing on their present. They are some of the most miserable people I know. They never see the mistakes they make and go on to repeat them. All of our past experiences make us what we are now. What wisdom we have, we have from what we have lived through. To ignore it is to deprive ourselves of some very useful information. The worst mistake to make is not to learn from the ones you have already made.
After writing the last chapter, I realized why I married Don. Several mental health professionals and others have asked me this question and I was never able to give a very good answer. Facing it now, I realize it was because I did not want to admit the truth. I married Don because I wanted someone scarier than my mother to keep her away. I can even remember thinking that while we were dating and then pushing the thought back because of how distasteful I found it.
The narcissistic signs were there. The horrible childhood stories that underlined how, although he had been treated so miserably, he was always this very strong person. His rough poetry that showed only the longing for perfection. Sitting there, listening to me to discuss all of his poems, while completely ignoring my own. He discourses on how we must do everything in accordance to our faith and then his attempts to compromise those same principles for his own gratification. His hurt looks when I thwarted those attempts by reminding him of his own words. His ignoring me when I confessed my own faults.
While we were engaged, I playfully put two ice cubes down Don's back. He repaid me by putting a whole tray down mine--making the statement: "Anyone who messes with me gets paid back tenfold." It bothered me at the time, but I told myself that he did have a rough childhood and was raised in a different religion, and once he realized he had someone who loved him, he would be less defensive. I pushed the incident to the back of my mind, but I never forgot that he believed in payback.
For reasons I no longer remember, the subject of spousal abuse came up before we were engaged. I’m sure deep down inside; the memory of Karen spawned it. Late one night in the church parking lot, I made the statement that if my husband ever hit me, I would take my kids, go to my parents and the next time he would see me would be behind my father’s shoulder with a hunting rifle pointed at him. I personally believe this is the only reason Don never physical hit me. But there was violence in him and I was very careful not to do anything that might be considered a physical attack. I hardly ever joked with him for fear I may cross some line I didn't even realize was there. I saw him throw a month old kitten against a wall when we where first married. I was absolutely horrified. I ran and retrieved the little creature to make sure it was okay. I was in too much shock to remember what I said, but after that he never took his anger out on another pet while I was around.
I got pregnant on our wedding night. It wouldn’t have happened, if I hadn’t taken the initiative. He spent most of the evening watching a John Wayne movie, ignoring my presence. Don never acted like an excited father to be. He talked constantly about the bills. I actually felt guilty about getting pregnant, even though we had both agreed to let God dictate when we would have children, instead of trying to postpone our family. In the delivery room, he sat in a chair and slept through most of my only four hours of labor.
Years later, I found out that he had been offended because I had not scheduled the first obstetrician’s appointment in the morning so he could go with me without missing any work. I reminded him I had told him that my doctor always had his new obstetric patients come on Wednesday afternoons to meet with a nutritionist and that was the only time available. I should have asked why he didn’t bother to miss work for it if it was so important to him. After all, I had to take the day off myself. He told our marriage counselor that I didn’t let him be a part of my pregnancy. I reminded him that I had to drag him to the appointments he did go to.
He didn’t go to that many of the appointments when I conceived our daughter about six months after our son’s birth, either. He didn’t even bother to mow our lawn, much less fix our swamp cooler during that summer of record-breaking temperatures. It was too much of a hardship for him to get up in the morning, before the attic heated up, to make sure his pregnant wife and infant son were safe from the heat. I kept our son near a window unit, while I often would stand in front of the open refrigerator to keep from being overheated. When the temperature hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit, even the walls of the house were hot to the touch. With my son, I huddled in a large pile of clean laundry I had been too weak to take care of. It was the coolest place I could find to lay down. If I had any sense at all, I should have left him then. Instead I gently asked and reminded, only to be ignored.
I didn’t dare get firm. Don could not stand to be criticized. He would be defensive even if something even
slightly hinted that he might have done something wrong. Once we were doing laundry together – a very
rare occurrence – and I asked in a panic if he had put our daughter’s velvet
dress in the dryer. I had just realized
I had forgotten about it. He blew up at
me for accusing him of doing laundry wrong.
I stepped back and told him I wasn’t saying he did anything wrong, I
just had forgotten to take the dress out and wanted to make sure it
air-dried. He sneered and said he
hadn’t put it in the dryer. Shaken, I
went back and tried to find where I had put the dress. Finally, I checked the dryer and found it
there. I stared at the dress for
several moments; not able to comprehend why he denied something he wasn’t sure
of, instead of just taking the time to check to be sure.
Several events happen around
this time that made the disintegration of our marriage apparent to even
me. Sarah and her family were dealing
with a trauma that spilled over to the rest of us and my mother was insisting I
pick up some of the pieces so she could look good. But I couldn’t and I didn’t want to. The shock, the pain, the helplessness drove me into clinical
depression. Don withdrew from me. I was to be there for him, not the other way
around.
At the time this happened, I was clueless. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was and I couldn't get Don to tell me. In counseling, he said it was because I didn't want to discuss the problems at home. I don't remember us having any discussions. I remember being told that I was doing an awful job at this and that, and that I should be doing things his way, which took in no account of caring for small children or my weakened state of health. I also remember that whenever I tried to explain this, he would get disgusted with me. What made it harder--he would always wait until I was about to fall asleep to talk to me. He would never want to talk about things earlier when I brought them up. I thought for awhile that it was because I talk too fast, so I worked hard to give him plenty of opportunity to speak his mind. Usually I would wait there for a few minutes, only to find out that he had totally ignored the whole question. I used to think that maybe if I had tried harder to be more alert that late, things would have been different. Now I don't think it would have made any difference.
I tried hard to make him understand my reason for doing the things the way I did them. After all, I was the person who had to do them; I had the right to do these things my own way. Especially since he was not as logical as he liked to think he was. For someone who often stated he was observant as Sherlock Holmes, he hardly noticed anything.
Sarah has said more than once that no man wanted a wife that was smarter than him and that the worst thing you could do was prove it to him. I’m not sure if it is fair to say that about men in general, but it is definitely true for narcissists. At the same time Don began shutting me out, we had an argument on, of all things, perpetual motion. Now, I was studying engineering when we were engaged, and at one time I could give you the mathematical proofs of why perpetual motion is impossible. Basically, you can't get something for nothing. But Don was convinced that an arrangement using a water siphon would work. Unable to leave a scientific fallacy alone, I tried to explain that once the water level evened out, all motion would stop because there would no longer be any unequal pressure to drive things. I also added that there would be internal friction to contend with, even if it could keep going. He basically said that my "book learning" didn't mean much in the real world. I pointed out that the "book learning" I was using was formulated from the real world. My lab group in eighth grade tried to get a siphon to act the way he described during a river simulation lab to save ourselves some labor and we were never able to keep things going. Then I showed him in a technical book where it stated the height beyond which a siphon will not work. Physics books he scoffs at, but he'll rarely argue with a technical manual.
About this time, he got a new supervisor at work who was female. It was obvious that he had a crush on her. He talked constantly about her, while refusing to pay any attention to his own family. I finally got angry and told him that he was neglecting us. Looking back, perhaps I should have gotten angry more often. Rage seems to be the language Don understands the best.
I shouldn’t have been surprised then, when Don didn’t react to a guy trying to hit on me in our own home. It was during our third year of marriage. I had an older version of DOS, which had a corrupted command file and I asked this guy if he could just send me a copy of that one file. He insisted on coming over to check on things. I was annoyed because I not only knew more about computers than this jerk, but my dad had installed a special compression program that was rather sensitive and I did not want anyone messing with any of my other settings.
Despite my warnings, he tried to install a beta version of a newer DOS while I was trying to get Don to come into the computer room with us, because he was making all these comments about how interesting I was, what beautiful way I had with words, and such. I wanted to keep an eye on what he was doing to my computer, but he made me so uncomfortable that I kept going into the living room to plead with Don to come into the computer room. I told him I would feel much better if he was in the room with us. Don said no.
I didn't want to be more obvious because my intuition said that this jerk would have probably deliberately destroyed my computer then. I found out from a few other people later I was right on this account. So, I did my best to hurry things up and get him into the living room. Even then, he wouldn't go away until I got my Don to start bragging about a sword he had made. I even retrieved it and let him show off. Finally, the guy decided it was his best interest to leave.
I told Don what this guy had been doing while messing with the computer and he said, "Well, I got the impression he wanted more than just friendship with you."
"Then why didn't you come into the room when I asked you to?" I asked.
He just shrugged and said that I handled things well enough. So, not only did I have to rebuild my system, but I had to live with the knowledge that my husband would not protect me from anyone. So much for marrying someone to keep my mother away. I had a dream once about my mother being a bear and threatening me. I kept calling for Don and he just shrugged and walked away. I think I should have paid closer attention to my dreams.
Many narcissists may be neat freaks, but Don was a slob. When we were first married, I would leave these piles alone on the reasoning that he was an adult and would take care of it himself. Unfortunately Don has a higher mess tolerance than most people and when he did get disgusted enough to clean things up, he would deliberately go after something of mine. It wouldn't matter that I have it in a box and out of the way--it wasn't organized according to him. He threw away several of my things, including the artwork I did during my therapy. He packed up most of the kitchen a few times as if I was a naughty little child who had to be punished for my lack of action. Meanwhile, his tools were everywhere and he couldn’t walk across the room to put something of his in the trash.
When we entered marriage counseling, Don actually had the audacity to say the only time the house was clean was when he did it by himself. I sat there in total shock. It was true that there were times that his help helped me get the house clean, but I had absolutely no memory of him totally cleaning the house. Afterwards, I mentioned this to two friends who I talked with on almost daily basis during that time. I was wondering if there was something I was forgetting. They didn't remember him doing anything like that and one pointed out that he couldn't had at that time because he was working a lot of overtime and when he wasn't he was helping someone else with something.
Another friend (or maybe it was the same one) didn't believe a word of his claim that he could keep things clean even with the kids around. She and I went on a camping trip one weekend. She remembered how our place looked when she picked me up (it was still very cluttered). She says she'll never forget the chaos that greeted us when we returned. All I can remember is that I had to step over a lot of stuff to get my things back to the bedroom. She still seems in shock over it even now when she talks about it.
When the kids were very little and I left them at home with their dad for a few hours, I would always find them banished to their rooms when I got home. This really bothered me and I finally told Don that it didn't make him a better housekeeper than me if he only managed to keep things clean by putting the kids in their rooms and ignoring them.
When I wrote that observation done in my journal, I also noted that the mess I had cleaned up in the living room the week before was his doing. I then began thinking over my past as a messy verses neat person. In college, I hardly ever had a messy place. My roommates were very neat people and I had no problem cleaning with them. Though my desk was usually stacked with stuff. When comes to paperwork, I believe in organized chaos. I can still find stuff. When I lived by myself I was pretty clean too, with the exception of keeping up with my dishes. Still, those got done at least once a week. My mother said that my place stayed cleaned only because I was hardly ever there. I believed her at the time, but looking back, I actually did spend a lot of time at my place doing homework and stuff. Then there was the time when I spent a whole lot of time in an apartment by myself in another city, looking for a job, and living hand to mouth. I actually kept things really clean there.
As I stated earlier, we went through three months of marriage counseling before it became obvious we weren't getting anywhere. All we accomplished was to establish the fact that I still had things to work out on a personal basis. Don had a bad childhood too, growing up with an alcoholic father and a cleft palate. But he swears he "has worked it all out by himself". The only person who seems to believe this is himself. People would come up to me all the time and say "I like Don, but he's such a hard person to talk to." Or "It's like trying to talk to a wall. I assume he talks to you, Miranda."
The truth was - not really; he would rather watch TV than talk to me. I lost Don to the television and work, long before I got a modem and a chance to talk to more people. During the marriage counseling, he made everything sound like my fault and insisted that I had to control everything. During a part when I was blaming myself for something, the counselor turned to Don and said, "Sounds like she's trying control everything again, Don. I mean, if I were you, I would be upset that she didn't think I had anything to do with the relationship. You better keep her from taking control through taking the blame for everything."
I had to work to keep a straight face when he said it - I don't know if Don caught his underlying message there. If he did, he chose to ignore it, because he continued to let me take the blame. When I started to point out his faults, he would invariably said that I did the same thing, but would never give specifics. I finally came up with one thing that not even he could admit that I would do something similar. It was very quiet that night.
He had stop going to church several years earlier. During the beginning of our counseling he started going again, but stopped when we stop our sessions. By the end, it was Miranda who was a fruitcake, but Don was just a quiet guy who just wanted everything calm. It was partly my own fault. Whenever Don refused to explore his actions, I would start up a dialog about my own problems. By the last session, the therapist and I agreed that I was subconsciously trying to protect Don at my own expense. When the therapist asked him if it bothered him that I talked to all these people on the Internet, he said, "No. She's found other people who understand what she's gone through." I was crushed. It was as if he really did want me to leave.