My idea of marriage begins with my parents, so I guess I’ll start there.
My early childhood was quite happy, but it didn’t stay that way. I think my parents started out in a good relationship. They met when they were hippies, both had ridiculously long hair in their wedding photos, the typical 70′s looking couple. My mom was a tiny thing, I think she told me she weighed 90 lbs on her wedding day. My dad was pretty slim himself. They waited 7 years to have me in 1981.
I have very fond memories of playing with my parents, and how loving they were. I remember Saturday morning cartoons with my dad, brunches of bacon and pancakes, my mom staying home to raise my sister and I. We lived out in the woods in the South, and there was lots to do outside, and that’s where we stayed most of the time. I think my dad was fairly alpha early on. I remember thinking he was kind of harsh at times, but my memories from then are kind of fuzzy. My parents were still affectionate then. My mom stayed at home with my sister and I, and took great care of the house. Her attentiveness and dedication are what I aspire to currently as a SAHM… I never want to become a bump on a log that does nothing all day.
Later on in my childhood, I think maybe around junior high, things started really going downhill. My parents stopped talking as much, and became like roommates. They fought pretty often as well. It was obvious that something had happened at some point to make them slightly hostile towards one another. My mom still did the best she could for us… she took 2 jobs at one point to make sure that we could afford to keep doing the few extracurricular activities that we did, while my dad continued his 1 job in a very unhappy fashion. Early in my life he read a lot, which was admirable, but that turned into hours of mindless video games. Which turned into complete and total ignorance of what was happening to his family around him.
Somewhere along the way, he’d gone from probably a balanced alpha/beta all the way to omega. Neither one. He asserted his dominance with the family when he wanted to, because he could throw a hell of a fit, but his 8 hour a day video game habit made us very resentful. He became a joke to me. At one point, he forgot to pick my sister and I up from the movies, and we sat there waiting for hours. This became a regular occurrence. It was embarrassing, and frustrating. If we tried to tell him something important while he was sitting in front of a computer screen, he’d acknowledge, then completely forget.
I think somewhere along the way, my mom just gave up. I came to find out later that there were some serious trust issues, and without getting into details, they were both responsible for it, but never found a way to recover from it, because they never communicated. I think my mom tried, but talking to my dad at that point was like talking to a brick wall. He would zone out looking at the screen, and then completely forget anyone was talking to him all together. I tried to talk to him about various things, and got the same zombie treatment.
After I left home to join the military, I started getting reports from my sister that they were fighting, and their fights were starting to get a bit more violent. She called me one morning, after I had been at a long night of night driving training, in tears and hysterics. My dad had shoved my mom, locked himself in the bathroom, and was threatening suicide. I ended up calling both my parents, telling them to “grow up and stop acting like fucking children, because their daughter is STILL IN THE HOUSE AND SHE’S FREAKING OUT.” My mom tried to pull the “I’m your mother, don’t talk to me like that” card, and quickly realized that I didn’t give a shit, as I told her so. Unfortunately, she took my disapproval of fighting in front of my sister as a sign that she should stay with my dad until my sister graduated.
After that, things seemed to get oddly better… my parents became more affectionate, my sister told me. My mother started working out and losing weight. Which set off another hellstorm, because my dad thought she was doing it because she was cheating. To be honest, I think she was. He became unbearably possessive, and not able to leave the house or do anything other than sit at home in silence with him, she became an alcoholic.
Eventually, they did divorce. So all that is the example that I had to work with. By the time I married my husband, I thought living in the same house and not talking to each other was the norm. Getting in little arguments over dumb things was the norm. Not showing affection was the norm. And so on and so on.
So then started 7 years of my marriage that I wish I could go back and fix…
