Underlying Concerns and Miscommunication

My relationship to my husband had some of the markers typical of an abusive relationship. This post is an attempt to give insight, not to defend anyone's psycho controlling behavior.

I was molested until shortly before I turned fourteen. I met the future ex about two-and-a-half years later when we were sixteen. I attempted suicide at seventeen. We got married at nineteen.

He eventually joined the military and that got me out of my hometown and away from my dysfunctional family. Shortly after we moved elsewhere, I made the conscious decision to stop having a big fit about stupid, annoying minor garbage.

He was bad about not closing kitchen cabinets, not turning off lights and not turning off the range. That last is genuinely a big deal in a "you might burn the house down" fashion.

I decided it didn't somehow improve the message to yell about it. I began just closing the kitchen cabinets myself and politely reminding him he left the light or the stove or the oven on and he needs to get better about that.

We were both dysfunctional young people from screwed up families. I knew mine was a mess and a lot of that had to do with World War II.

He liked claiming he came from some perfect family. And then shortly after we moved away, his dad divorced his mom to go marry the girlfriend he had been living with in another state for years while mom and dad told the kids "It's NORMAL for military families to live apart." And he bought that hook, line and sinker.

Most likely, his father didn't suddenly grow a spine. My husband's paternal grandfather -- his dad's dad -- died while my husband was in basic training.

"Poppy" had dropped out of the fourth grade at age nine to begin working full-time to support his mother and three brothers during the Great Depression after his dad died. He then served something like thirty years in the military after he got old enough. 

Anyway, after about sixteen years of marriage, I made a little speech during the roughly 160th repeat of the same argument about not wanting to hurt him anymore and not wanting to be hurt anymore and feeling like we gave it our best shot. And he sighed with relief and agreed to divorce me.

Prior to that, I frequently screamed about wanting a divorce during some argument that ended with me crying and him holding me and declining to divorce me.

I have health problems. I was suicidal for years. I was a homemaker for years. We had two children together.

If you are a responsible human being and letting your wife walk out and take the kids with her looks like DISASTER in the making, you say no.

That's not abusive behavior. And it's not actually psycho controlling behavior either.

At a minimum, it's enlightened self interest by someone NOT wanting to face a future where his wife and small children are dead or being abused by some new man and everyone wants to know what in the hell is wrong with him.

It's no different from me telling my husband when he had adult onset chicken pox -- which is much deadlier than in children -- "Get dressed and get in the car. You are going to see a doctor." And following that with "I'm not asking. I'm telling you." when he began to protest he didn't want to.

I was mentally preparing to call 911 and advise them "I need an ambulance and possibly police backup to come get a mentally deranged, combat trained soldier with a high fever off my couch" because he was on track to DIE in the next few days. His fever was climbing 0.8 degrees a day and was above 104. 

Above 105 can result in permanent brain damage and at 108, the body can no longer cool itself and you die without appropriately medical intervention. We were less than 24 hours out from permanent brain damage temperatures.

I felt like "I'll be damned if he is going to die on my couch without seeing a doctor knowing I can end up in jail for that." So he was going to see a doctor that day, one way or another. 

I can tell you with some degree of confidence that he agreed to a divorce during the roughly 160th repeat of the same argument because we had been homeschooling for roughly four years and we had the same argument about how to teach our oldest son math once a week every week that school was in session, so probably 40 times a year for four years. 

I'm the math geek in the family. My ex didn't get along well with math and I tutored him in college algebra while I was the little wifey. I told him his solution was wrong and suggested he plug the number ten into the equation in place of X and reduce. 

My solution said 1000=1000. 

His said 1000=1,000,000.

He threw his pencil across the room in frustration.

Like daddy, our oldest doesn't get along so well with math. I had my own plan for how to solve that and the ex agreed after a loud argument every weekend to do it my way -- with no written math exercises for a while -- and then on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, he would come home from work and ask to see the written math work.

Rinse and repeat.

I understood he was scared his child was like him but worse and was scared that homeschooling wasn't a real education and I did everything in my power to genuinely convince him the kids were getting a solid education. We had poor communication which we never resolved and substantive math education for our oldest didn't happen until he agreed to divorce me that day and magically for reasons I don't understand and never asked about, he got off my back and our oldest finally got a solid math education doing it my way.

I understood why my husband was being difficult about some things. I understood that his fears weren't unfounded nor neurotic. I just sometimes never figured out how to get him to see what I saw.

That agreement to divorce happened halfway through GIS summer camp for me. Had I not been a long-time homemaker and deathly ill, average starting salaries for graduates of that program would have comfortably supported me and two children.

I spent a lot of years trying to figure out a path forward on leaving my husband. Things didn't begin to gel in that regard until I had a proper diagnosis -- something I call "a better label than hypochondriac" -- and that led to substantial education and the ability to finally actually hold a job.

The last "psycho controlling" hiccup was while the divorce paperwork was being filed and we were still living together and I was still very sick and failing to get a job. He had a fit one day about "Get a JOB! ANY job!" And I rebutted that with "Fine. I'll become a hooker. It's a JOB! ANY job!" 

I needed to find my own way forward as a former homemaker, a woman in a man's world and seriously medically handicapped. I ultimately spent a year living with my parents during the divorce and after that the ex shut up entirely about things like my job search because he knew my parents would make sure our kids ate.

My mother also had conniptions once because my job hunt was taking too long and she was feeling stressed. I knew I needed a desk job. I didn't have the strength to be on my feet all day, even just standing in one place as a cashier.

I didn't want to try to justify it to either of them. I knew it would sound like an excuse. I just needed to keep looking for a solution that actually worked for me in spite of having serious barriers to successfully pursuing adequate earned income.

I did develop a plan without telling my husband. Before I informed him I wanted a divorce, I applied to GIS school and I applied to a paid internship program with one of the seventeen National Laboratories in the US. I got as far as an initial phone interview, but ultimately didn't get the internship.

I had hoped to test run the working single mom thing by taking an internship in a different state. My plan was to do that and if it worked, file for divorce and pursue a well-paid career and raise the kids alone.

My health issues got in the way and that's not how that went down. The practical details were more challenging than I expected.

If you think your husband is being a jerk because he makes the money, well, go make money yourself adequate to tell him to take this homemaker schtick and shove it. 

I'm aware men can be jerks. But men also typically make substantially more money than women and their concerns that you can't support yourself and the children aren't just misogynistic BS.

Again, I'm not justifying abusive behavior. I'm trying to tell people men and women live in different worlds and see different concerns and sometimes they just don't understand what the issue is that their spouse is hung up on.

If you think it's a non-issue and he or she is overreacting, prove it. Bring results, not complaints.