Target Will Keep Us Together

As Wes and I approach our second anniversary, I decided to write a little meditation on pants and marriage, and communication.

Sometimes I think he does it on purpose.  I'm almost positive he does it on purpose.

On an average day, work pants and pajama pants can be found on just about any handy surface.  Dining room chair backs, sofa back, across the bed, balled up under the bed, over the fan, balled up on the floor in the back of the closet.  Pretty much anywhere you might imagine although not ever where you might expect pants to be.

It was frustrating for reasons I couldn't fully articulate but surely he knows this annoys the hell out of me?  I mean, we've been living together for over three years now.  

A few months ago, we would have to have a Discussion about this.  It would have been about the pants, but not really about the pants.  You know.

Maybe we have both gotten a little wiser since then.  This time, we did not have to waste time with a Discussion about the damn pants.  This time I bought a four dollar door hook from Target and stared him down when he prepared to fling his pants to God knows where.

Then we had a conversation that neither one of us could pretend was about pants.

Sometimes Marriage Sucks

Photo by Love Joleen

I haven't been writing much.  As far as reasons go, feel free to take your pick.

• It's been a difficult season mentally and emotionally
• My spirits were at an all-time low
• The vessel just seemed so empty.

I have been thinking a lot about why I feel the way that I do these days and I think I can trace it back to the holiday season, specifically, our burning bowl ceremony.

I wrote "2012 was a hard year for us and we want 2013 to be better.  We wanted to focus on moving forward, onward and upward.  Naming the things that have been holding us each back, separately and together, and watching them turn to so much smoke and ash was the first step towards freedom."

As it turns out, there are a whole bunch of other steps after the first one.  All of them seem to require a considerable amount of mental, emotional, and physical effort.  For example, one of the things I put on my list was my fear of not being a good enough wife.  To truly face that issue, and let it go, has meant confronting the things that conspire to make me feel that way.

I had a really long list.  Needless to say, It hasn't been pretty.

Added to that, Wes and I have been struggling to reconcile our expectations of marriage with our reality.  Weirdly enough, I think we both have the same idea in mind when we think wife-a being who is 80% Claire Huxtable, 10% fifties caricature, and 10% porn star.  It should go without saying that I am no Claire Huxtable.

This completely imaginary and ridiculous standard causes problems.  I feel guilty for not measuring up and he feels annoyed because I don't measure up which in turn annoys the ever living shit out of me because COME ON!  It's a vicious cycle that would probably end, or turn into something equally nasty, if one of us would just knuckle under, put on the damn pearls and get to vacuuming.

But I can't.  And I won't.  

I know a lot of this comes out of our current difficult circumstances.  I imagine our expectations wouldn't seem so ridiculous if our realities were a little less grim.  Nothing else is easy right now but what is easy is to blame one another.  It's easy to do that because it works so nicely with the idea that if one of us sucked less at x, y, z our whole lives would be better.  It's got to be somebody's fault you know.  It's always easier to take if it's someone else's fault.

But, it's not my fault and I'm done accepting blame for things I didn't do just to keep the peace.  I did not get married to cheerfully work myself into the ground.  I did not get married because I had an overwhelming desire to take on the care and feeding of another person.  I did not get married to take the place of someone's mother.  

I got married because I believed we had a partnership.  I got married because I believed we were equals.  I got married because I believed we were committed to working together to build a life worth living together.

And love.  

Love itself has seemed embattled lately.  

Emotional Justice: Standing Up

The end in the beginning-I packed my things and let Wes know I had to get out.  He packed a bag too and came with me.

Source: cuntfetti.tumblr.com via Aunt on Pinterest

I like conversation.  Sure we can talk about it.  We can both take turns and say what we think and how we feel.  We can listen to each other.  We can agree to disagree.  We can do all of those things at normal volumes and without theatrics or an audience.

I don't like confrontation.  To clarify, I don't like ugly, unnecessary confrontation.  What I like is dealing with issues as directly and as calmly as possible.  Why do we have to get loud, call each other names, belittle, and attempt to publicly shame one another?  Why do we have to be so ugly and disrespectful? 

In my last post in what has become a series, I wrote about a situation where I felt the need to exercise emotional justice for myself in response to a gaslighting attempt.

First, AFFIRM YOURSELF.  I am not crazy.  This is what happened.  This is why it is wrong.  This is why it makes me feel this way. 

Let it marinate.  I digested the conversation for a day or so.  I did this for myself but also because I knew I wanted to talk to my husband about it. 

Talk about it.  I was able to express what happened and how it made me feel.  Taking the time to process and think helped me clearly articulate my thoughts.  By the time we talked I was also calm enough to listen which meant Wes and I could have a real discussion.  If you do want to talk about it, talk about it with someone you trust or find an impartial party. 

Assess your options.  Think about what you want to happen-how can you proceed to meet those ends?  Maybe you can limit contact with this person.  Maybe you can choose to alter how you engage with them.  Our choices are limited right now and in a very real sense, the best we can do if we want to remain together is to wait it out and move as soon as possible. 

Decide on coping strategies.  If you can't escape your situation completely, think about how you want to cope.  Waiting it out sucks, but in the meantime we are adapting by ensuring that we both spend as little time in the house as possible and we do our best to keep separate meal times.  Additionally, I no longer engage in conversation with him.   

My coping strategy of disengagement became the lever that caused the situation to escalate.  My decision to no longer engage in conversation with one individual was noticed and disapproved of.  I should clarify and add that beyond saying "good morning", "good bye", or "good night", I generally had nothing to say to my husband's father.  He was not content with leaving it there.  He insisted that we have a "family conversation" involving himself, me, my husband, and my husband's mother as the so-called mediator.  This "conversation" quickly escalated into a confrontation that only he participated in.  During this confrontation, he refused to let me speak or complete a sentence without intervention from his wife and he responded with anger whenever I pointed out flaws in his logic.  He lied, he accused, he called me names, he tried to yell, he made angry gestures in my direction, and he insulted me, my upbringing, and my family.  He repeatedly addressed my husband instead of me and when Wes made it clear that he was on my side, refused to allow him to speak either. 

During this theater piece, the "moderator" repeatedly stated that "we just all have to get along."  She also insisted that I spend more time in the house and stop going into the city with my husband everyday.  Additionally, she insisted that I not spend all the time in the house in my husband's room.  She and her husband insisted on family mealtimes as well.

Essentially, my safety nets were being removed.  

These things were said in the face of my assertions that no, I was not happy living with them and no, I was not going to pretend to be.  I'm not happy because it is not a situation where I should be happy. I'm an adult-I don't want to live with my own parents, let alone anyone else's.  No, I will not abide by those demands.  When his father called me childish and a spoiled brat, I pointed out that he was the only one calling anyone names.  When he tried to lecture me on how families deal with problems, I pointed out that the entire exercise was pointless because he was the only one talking and that it would have been better for him to say what he had to say to just me and that audiences were unnecessary.

In short, I stood up for myself.  

It wasn't easy.  As I said, I don't like confrontation.  Besides all the ugliness, I always have the sense that the person forcing the issue is doing so for their own benefit and enjoyment and I hate playing those kinds of games.  It was masturbatory for him, he really enjoyed it and in fact, was downright giddy the next morning.  Added to that, I got the very real impression that he was trying to frighten me. It seemed that what he really wanted was for me to feel afraid, threatened, and chastised.  

In that sense, he succeeded.  I did feel threatened.  I never felt safe or at ease in that household and that confrontation ensured that I never would.  During the confrontation, I took his pounding on the table, raised voice, and pointed fingers for what they were-and I was afraid.  I didn't think he would hurt me physically, but I knew he was trying to hurt me mentally.  I knew he was trying to shame me and make me believe things about myself and about what happened that weren't true.  I knew I was under attack.  

Wes stood up for me and I stood up for myself.  It wasn't easy for either of us.  We were afraid and angry and sick.  

I was shaking and i wanted to cry.  

I didn't.  We didn't.

We stood our ground.

Whatever else happens, we have that moment.

Emotional Justice: Gaslighting

30Before30: Prioritize Mental Health

I had the most fucked-up conversation I have ever had as an adult with my husband's father a couple of weeks ago.  If I were to write a textbook on what gaslighting is and its use in mentally and emotionally abusive relationships I could use a transcript of this conversation and its aftermath as an example.  For your reference, this feministe post draws out a fuller explanation.

Source

Essentially, my points and comments were met with phrases like, "Well, I think anyone who thinks like that has something wrong with them," "You're not understanding what I'm saying," and "I think you are imagining things that are not there," and "Now I don't want you to get upset/you don't have to get upset."

These statements aren't so bad on their own, right?  Well, it gets weird when I put them in context.  Whenever I disagreed with his points, providing evidence and reasoning, he would say "people" who think like that have something "wrong" with them or he would imply that I misunderstood him when I hadn't.  When those tactics didn't work, he resorted to saying I was imagining things because I was upset or angry.

All of these tactics are designed to make me doubt the validity of my own thoughts and feelings and even my own experience of the conversation in real time.  Systematic and repeated exposure to this type of behavior is a form of abuse.  As this article points out, over time, gaslighting can weaken a victim by compromising their confidence and essentially endangering their sense of self.

Source

So how do you know if it is happening to you?

Dr. Robin Stern, a licensed practicing psychoanalyst and author of The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life, identified some signs that might help you identify whether you are being gaslighted.  

1. You are constantly second-guessing yourself

2. You ask yourself, "Am I too sensitive?" a dozen times a day.

3. You often feel confused and even crazy at work.  

4. You're always apologizing to your mother, father, boyfriend,, boss.

5. You can't understand why, with so many apparently good things in your life, you aren't happier.

6. You frequently make excuses for your partner's behavior to friends and family.

7. You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don't have to explain or make excuses.

8. You know something is terribly wrong, but you can never quite express what it is, even to yourself.

9. You start lying to avoid the put downs and reality twists. 

10. You have trouble making simple decisions.

11. You have the sense that you used to be a very different person - more confident, more fun-loving, more relaxed.

12. You feel hopeless and joyless.

13. You feel as though you can't do anything right.

14. You wonder if you are a "good enough" girlfriend/ wife/employee/ friend; daughter.

Emphasis added is mine.  Source.

Now the question: How do you practice self-care in this situation?

First, an important part of prioritizing mental health for me has been recognizing when I need to practice self care and believing that it is alright to do so.  This seems like a very basic stance but I think a lot of women, myself included, are brought up to do the exact opposite.  Girls tend to be socialized as nurturers and care-givers but the emphasis of all that care is always supposed to be focused outward.  Focusing inward can seem selfish and wrong.  

Swallowing all that hurt and anger and bitterness is no way to live.  I can, and will, tell you stories.

Here is what I did, however, I recommend that you always research and inform yourself as much as possible.  The links and references I have provided are a good start.  

Additionally, if you have access to counseling services use them.  There is NOTHING WRONG with reaching out for help-when we bitch to our friends we are essentially doing the same thing for free feedback of questionable quality.

First, AFFIRM YOURSELF.  I am not crazy.  This is what happened.  This is why it is wrong.  This is why it makes me feel this way.

Let it marinate.  I digested the conversation for a day or so.  I did this for myself but also because I knew I wanted to talk to my husband about it.

Talk about it.  I was able to express what happened and how it made me feel.  Taking the time to process and think helped me clearly articulate my thoughts.  By the time we talked I was also calm enough to listen which meant Wes and I could have a real discussion.  If you do want to talk about it, talk about it with someone you trust or find an impartial party.

Assess your options.  Think about what you want to happen-how can you proceed to meet those ends?  Maybe you can limit contact with this person.  Maybe you can choose to alter how you engage with them.  Our choices are limited right now and in a very real sense, the best we can do if we want to remain together is to wait it out and move as soon as possible.

Decide on coping strategies.  If you can't escape your situation completely, think about how you want to cope.  Waiting it out sucks, but in the meantime we are adapting by ensuring that we both spend as little time in the house as possible and we do our best to keep separate meal times.  Additionally, I no longer engage in conversation with him.  

It's not ideal, but it's the best we have right now.

Emotional Justice: Introduction

Source: crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com via Abby on Pinterest

Sometimes I lurk on Christian or Mormon wifely websites.  Have you seen these?  These aren't shelter blogs or family/design/fashion/housewifery things-although I love those too.  These are blogs that are straight up with the big guns-words like "submission"and phrases like "joyful service" or "yielded heart" . . . . the kind of talk that would drive me out of a church pew like the hounds of hell were behind me.

When I cruise through these sites I look at the families, the smiles, the sparkle . . . and I marvel at how seductive it all is.  The message seems to be "if you just let go, you can have all of this too".  You can have peace of mind.  You can have security.  You can have a life that looks like this one-bright, shiny, (mostly white), bookended with scripture and made for Pinterest.

The fantasy falls apart for me when I start to read the posts.  *These might be triggers for anyone who is dealing with or who has ever struggled with mental or emotional abuse.*  A lot of posts about marriage deal with the issue of biblical submission within a marriage, husband as spiritual and literal head of the household and so on.  Women share their experiences and their struggles and provide encouragement for one another.

What bothers me most is when the posts sound like this:

(The context: a disagreement between husband and wife and husband retreats to pray about the situation.  This is the wife's response.)

     Everything in me melted at that very moment---all my anger, my fear, my willfulness. How could I’ve been so stupid? Why had I been such a stubborn, silly, self-willed girl?     It was a sobering revelation for a new bride.  To think that I was willing to defy my husband and the Lord who put us together for the mere sake of getting my own way.     Can you guess why? Well, you're right. It’s because I had more confidence in myself than in him. It’s because I’d rather fight for what I wanted than to give in to another.

From "Perfect Stranger"by Lisa Jacobsen found here.  Emphasis added is mine. 

This post struck a chord.  They reminded me of that loop of negative and hurtful self-talk I engaged in when I fell victim to mental and emotional manipulation.  I bore the burden of my own emotions, but I also bore shame for having them in the first place.  How stupid, how silly of me to be so upset and so on.

Can we talk about emotional justice?

There is nothing stupid or wrong about feeling anger or fear in the presence of something that makes you angry or fearful.  I often think that one of the ways we are most brutal to one another is when we deny, or attempt to deny, others access to their own emotions without shame.  

Consider what Yolo Akili has to say about this kind of oppression of the spirit.

Oppression is trauma. Every form of inequity has a traumatic impact on the psychology, emotionality and spirituality of the oppressed. The impact of oppressive trauma creates cultural and individual wounding. This wounding produces what many have called a  “pain body”, a psychic energy that is not tangible but can be sensed, that becomes an impediment to the individual and collective’s ability to transform and negotiate their conditions.Emotional justice is about working with this wounding. It is about inviting us into our feelings and our bodies, and finding ways to transform our collective and individual pains into power. Emotional justice requires that we find the feeling behind the theories. It calls on us to not just speak to why something is problematic, but to speak to the emotional texture of how it impact us; how it hurts, or how it brings us joy or nourishment. Emotional Justice is very difficult for many activists, because historically most activist spaces have privileged the intellect and logic over feeling and intuition. This is directly connected to sexism and misogyny, because feeling and intuition are culturally and psychologically linked to the construct of “woman”, a construct that we have all been taught to invalidate and silence. So by extension we invalidate and silence the parts that we link to “woman” in ourselves: our feelings, our intuition, and our irrationality.

Emphasis added is mine.

I get angry.  Sometimes I cry in rage or frustration.  I become quiet and withdrawn.  I escalate my use of the word fuck exponentially.  I become brutal in my deployment of logic.  I plot.  I create revenge fantasies in my head. . . . In short, I have feelings and occasionally, I feel them.

I am within my rights to do so and so are you.  

If anyone attempts to suggest otherwise they are attempting to invalidate and silence you-don't do the same to yourself.

Which Way is Up?

I think I have reached the point where making good choices is no longer an option because all of the choices available suck.

I feel pretty squeezed these days.  I am under all kinds of trendy pressure right now.  Unemployment, poor job market, aging and ill parent requiring care, student loans looming . . . .  I'm tempted to leave it at that because it feels so lame to stress or complain about the same issues that everyone is struggling with these days.  I do want to write about it though, particularly because it is so difficult to talk about how I feel. Added to that, feeling silenced--feeling like I don't deserve to speak or that no one will listen--makes the sense of isolation worse.

We have been busy these last few weeks attending orientations, interviews, and looking for apartments.  Yesterday, I was very upset to discover that I actually wasted quite a bit of time and money on those things because my husband thinks it would be better for us to live with his parents for a month or so to save money before we sign a lease.  And by "better" he means "we pretty much have to."  And I know what "a month" means but this "or so" business is ominous to say the least.

I was, am, devastated.  And that word is actually not dramatic enough to really express how I feel.

That said, I do understand that this situation is probably not what anyone involved has been dreaming about/hoping for/longing for.  I get that it pretty much sucks for everyone.  But . . . .

I don't think I can do it.

Aside from just not wanting to, I am not in a place where I have the necessary mental or emotional fortitude.  One thing I have discovered this year is that my physical health depends much more strongly on the general health and well-being of those two factors than anything else I might do.  This puts me in the position of wondering if a month "or so" of discomfort, turmoil, and general unhappiness will set me back for the rest of my life.

Again, I think the words I've chosen are probably not dramatic enough. 

• I feel backed into a corner without viable choices.  These are triggers.

• This move would be isolating, and in this situation, only isolating for me.  This is a trigger.

• I would not have the privacy that I am used to or basic control over my environment.  More triggers.

• I would have no physical outlet or escape.  This is the overwhelming panic button.

Those are broad strokes of how powerless and alone this decision makes me feel.  Just typing and looking at the words is enough to make my chest feel tight, to make my breath short.  

I don't think I can do it--but I don't know what else to do.