Growing (apart) pains
- Heather Barclay
- Nov 4, 2022
- 6 min read
Growing apart can be so painful.
Looking back, I can't seem to figure out when it all started to go wrong. There were signs for sure, and when I think about it, there are certainly moments and events that stand out more than others. But I think trying to figure out what started this ball rolling is like trying to figure out which snowflake fell onto the grass first. Because that's what it was like - a series of tiny moments in time that on their own don't stand out but start to accumulate pretty quickly.
One of the things that had made us work so well for so long was that we were such a balancing/complementary pair. All of the things that I wasn't (chill, focused... heh), he was. And vice versa. We fell in love over our shared fascination of serial killers, and our love of horror movies. He was the person in my life around whom I could be completely and totally 100% who I am. To coopt a common current term, he was my safe space. No matter what I had to do or how I had to act for work - I could always come home and put the loud-mouth, disgusting, inappropriate, rabid wolverine "inner child" on full display without any judgement.
We lived together for four years before we finally decided to get married in the fall of 2013. One year after that, we decided we'd move back to my home state of Massachusetts. I'd never been so happy. I was back home in the city of Champions. In the land of people who speak normally. In the birthplace of basically the entire country (sorry Virginia, but they hated it SO MUCH there, they literally disappeared and then came up here to try again). I got a job here with a firm I adore, he started working in the restaurant industry up here as well. Everything was coming up roses.
So like I said... I still don't know where it started to go wrong. But I know that I suddenly was becoming less and less happy. It started with not going out of my way to spend time at home, and eventually morphed into going out of my way to spend time away from home. We'd go through different waves of the same issues. I'd try to pick my battles, and not nag every single time I saw something wasn't done the way I thought it should have been done, or hadn't gotten done at all. But then eventually after just stuffing all of those little things down, suddenly one morning there'd be a spot of hot sauce on the counter (that's not what Frank had in mind when he told you to put that sh*t on everything!) and I would LOSE IT. And six months of "don't bring this up, it's not worth it" would just come out of me like lava. And this man, who I've loved for so many years, would just look STUNNED because in his mind it was completely irrational and out of the blue. After one of these, which may have been the first time I'd ever used the "D" word, I agreed that I wouldn't hold onto my grievances until I became volcanic - rather I would let him know real time if something was wrong. Well - that seemed like a good idea on paper. But I don't think he realized (and maybe I didn't either) how many grievances I had! Addressing issues real time can very quickly turn into pervasive nitpicking. Ask me how I know...
Finding ways to have healthy, productive arguments with your partner is really challenging. It was actually my "derby wife" (your "person" in roller derby who agrees to deal with riding in a car with your smelly gear on road trips, and to go to the hospital with you if you break yourself, etc) who brought up the concept of love languages to me a few years ago. I'm 100%, without question acts of service. What you do is what matters to me. Not what you say, not touching me, not giving me stuff. What you DO. I would say Tai on the other hand is words of affirmation with perhaps a pinch of physical touch. Ironically, the only thing I hate more than being touched is saying nice things. So that's a bit tricky! I think that if your love language is acts of service, and you feel like ZERO acts of service are being performed, it feels like your partner simply doesn't care. And honestly, isn't that the REAL "opposite" of love? Everyone thinks it is hate, but I'd argue the opposite of love is apathy or indifference. Being hated means you're taking up space in someone's head. Apathy or indifference from your partner feels as though you just simply don't exist and I think I'd rather be hated, personally. Similarly if words of affirmation is your love language, then having the majority of your communication from your partner be angry, cold, and decidedly NOT affirming, it has to be so isolating and lonely.
On my end, I felt as if he wasn't contributing to our marriage in a meaningful way anymore. It wasn't anything discrete or quantifiable enough for me to actually make a list of all the ways in which I needed him to change, I just didn't feel that he was being an equal partner. Admittedly, my personality is such that I tend to take over everything always. I have my father to thank for that, and frankly, the entire Barclay bloodline. We are a take-charge people. I also think that because of my past trauma of being "stuck" in an abusive relationship, having this feeling of being inextricably tied to a person financially through various bills, debts, and our apartment lease, I overcorrected a bit on the other side. Even when things were good in my marriage, I required full control of bills and money, and it was non-negotiable for everything to be in my name. I'd never allow myself to be in a place where I'd be financially tied to someone, nor would I be vulnerable in that way again. Unfortunately, that all manifested into behaviors that were unhealthy and unfair to my husband. I was (am?) independent to a fault. My need to be self-sufficient was to the exclusion of being a good half of a married couple. I was emasculating, demanding, unforgiving... and those were some of my better qualities. As things became more strained between us, I took over more and more of the duties, and became more and more (and quite demonstratively) bitter and resentful.
According to me, he didn't do enough, and what he did do was wrong. And I'm sure he'd tell you that according to him, why would he bother trying to do anything if the end result was still going to be that I was unhappy with him and/or the end result. His lack of acts of service (both real and perceived), and my lack of words of affirmation (and in fact, an increasingly prevalent pattern of terse words) turned us into a very unhappy couple. I was always angry. He, I'm sure, was always feeling inadequate and henpecked. We stopped having meaningful conversations, we both started drinking more, and we stopped sleeping together - both literally and colloquially. I am the queen of disassociation (ask my therapist). I carved out the parts of our relationship that no longer served me - which happened to be the parts that made us a married couple. I redefined our relationship as this weird best friend/roommate dynamic that allowed me to enjoy spending time with him again, and not feeling so angry and bitter.
And that's where we stayed - this plutonic married roommate friend couple thing. We stayed there for 22 months. Nearly two years of our lives were spent not "speaking our truths" and essentially plugging our ears/covering our eyes to block out anything that signaled how badly this marriage was failing. I'm still not sure if he was as aware of it as I was but I know I spent those 22 months trying to just tread water, knowing how the story ended. I also spent those 22 months telling myself it was worth it if it meant not ever having to break his heart, or to have to break my mother's heart honestly, because they two of them are BFF and I was half worried she'd keep HIM in the divorce! (Kidding... mostly) We'd watched this rock solid foundation, onto which we'd decided to build a life together, start to come apart like a Jenga tower. Block by block, the structural integrity became weaker and weaker, but as long as we didn't sneeze, or breathe too hard, or look directly at it, it felt like it could hold. But in the end, a very small, seemingly asinine interaction one evening pulled that last block that caused the entire thing to start wobbling, and come tumbling down.
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