Brave Enough To Be Bliss

This continued for what felt like months and I was wearing thin. I had been promoted at work, which came with a bonus and increased salary, so in order to stop the madness, I finally agreed to use several years of the bonus to join the club. I stipulated that golf would now be our family activity--no other entertainment, less eating out, etc. It wasn’t that I saw no benefits to joining, it was just that I felt pushed into doing something I didn’t feel comfortable with financially. I don’t know for sure if I gave in to make him happy or to make him stop asking me about it, or both. Whatever it was, I didn’t dig deep to figure it out and this scenario would play out for the rest of our marriage. Because I refused to do c onflict, I just acted out my feelings but didn’t actually talk about them. It’s not that I consciously did this, I can just look back and see it now. I was upset. I didn’t express my feelings. And I ended up feeling resentful toward him when I was the one who was in control, or should have been, of my own behavior, i.e. giving in. Maybe he “shouldn’t” have continued to ask me, but the pattern had been long established, and I couldn’t control his behavior, I could only control my own…but I was years away from learning that vital piece of information. He would want something; I wouldn’t agree to it. He would keep asking, I would eventually agree. I refused to have the conflict to sort out this issue at any point in our marriage, so me blaming him is simply not fair. He wasn’t having any issue with the pattern because he got what he wan ted. The responsibility to change the pattern was up to me because I was the one who had the issue with it. Saying he “should” have not asked again is simply not taking personal responsibility for my part in the relationship and trying to blame him for everything. It was impossible to change the pattern unless I was willing to have conflict and stand up for myself, and I chose the path of least resistance and then blamed him. This led to me nagging at him about other things, giving him the silent treatment, pouting, cleaning, avoiding him, withholding sex and I’m sure the list could go on and on. Another example is when I was working on my master’s degree and taking night or weekend classes while I still had everything else going on that I mentioned above. Something had to give as I was hanging on by a thread, although I absolutely did not state that by vulnerably saying, “I’m exhausted and I need help.” Instead, I hinted and acted out by being extremely grouchy. I did ask him and Kylee to clean the house while I was at class one Saturday, though, and not surprisingly they told me how hard it was and how much time it took. Instead of discussing it, I saw a business card for a cleaning service on my driveway when I got home from class. I chose not to have a hard conversation, instead took it as a sign I needed to hire someone to clean the house, but I really just didn’t want to have to address it with them. My decision was to increase household expenses in order to avoid a conflict, which then added more stress on me with paying the bills. I did it to myself, but I assure you he paid dearly for it with my behavior every month when I went to pay all the bills. It was always easier to blame him for something that made me uncomfortable and make up the story in my mind that “he should know better, or he should know how I felt, or he s houldn’t put me in that position, etc.” I didn’t take control of my own behavior and instead wanted him to read my mind, “love” me enough to know what I was thinking, feeling, or wanting, and that was a futile effort that doomed our relationship. I was years away from taking responsibility for my own behavior and decisions. My decisions to keep the peace and avoid conflict created extreme unrest within me and our relationship, but in my mind, it was always his fault. And it was unfair of me to complain to any friend, as women tend to do, about my flawed perception when I wasn’t even responsible enough to manage my own behavior. Certainly, he was not perfect, but this book isn’t about him, it’s about me. And the bottom line is that we can only control our own behavior, which is why it’s important for me to reflect and learn from my first marriage so I wouldn’t take the same behaviors into my next relationship. No one could ever have read my mind well enough to do all the things I thought he “should.” (Just a reminder , readers, if this is making you uncomfortable, if your body is feeling uneasy…this is your cue to do your own self -reflection, not judge me.)

While I didn’t realize any of this about my behavior until a decade after our divorce, the following quote would have been key for my husband to understand. A longtime friend was with me, Kylee, several of her friends and

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