One of the main reasons that relationships fail is communication issues, at least that is what I learn on a counselling course I did years ago. That was certainly true of my relationship, I spent years changing and adapting my communication style and behaviour in an attempt to improve my relationship. I spent most of my energy and time working out what didn’t work and what did. What did work? There’s a question, because truthfully I can not remember one. With hindsight I see my relationship was all about finding the next way to fail at communication.
Time and time again I was told by my partner, I wasn’t listening and I didn’t understand, each time he said that, despair set in, I fell to the bottom on a dark hole, I cried myself to sleep as he snored beside me. By the morning, he has forgotten any argument had happened the previous day, I spent days processing it.
My parents were and still are a partnership they work together, even in the 70’s the gender roles weren’t traditional, Dad would hoover, he was better at it, my Mum cooked, she was better at that, and when they married she taught him how to cook, they both worked, my parents were a team, my Mum’s sister had similar relationships. All the females in my family were strong and a force to be reckoned with. Growing up, I knew that was fairly unique. I did not question that that was the sort of relationships that would have. When you fall in love, you stay together, because to grow together, adapt to lives trails together, equally. That assumption was one of my failures.
Thorough marriage counselling I found out that my husband attitude was:
” I will behave how I want in my home, this is my castle and I do as I please. I have no interest in even considering that my behaviour is damaging to all those who live here too. That is your problem. I will complain about everyone else, how their behaviour is damaging me and demand that you change it. But I will not change mine.”
Another of my failures was not accepting that.
I pointed out to him numerous times that I struggled with his excessive (at least a bottle of wine a day, binged in the hour after he got home from work) drinking. I hated the erratic behaviour it brought out. I worried about the damage to his health. I worried about the behaviour he was modelling in front of our children. He believed that I put too much emphasis on his drinking being a problem, it wasn’t a problem, and he was not an alcoholic.
He would not tolerate shouting from anyone else, although would deny he had shouted. If I increased the volume of my voice because he had said he couldn’t hear me, I had shouted. I learnt to pause, make sure I was facing him and spoke more quietly.
He did not like it if I was too quiet. Some days, I just didn’t feel like talking; too tired/overwhelmed/troubled. He feared my silence would last days and would end in a massive tantrum, as it has done with his father. No amount of reassurance or absence of any tantrum would reassure him.
There was to be no anger at all. Anger is bad, always. I would try to talk about the positives of anger, the motivation it give us to change. His deep rooted fear of his anger father was too strong to entertain that concept. My suppression of my anger, resulted in depression.
Another failing – my decision to accept and express my anger.
However, these failings are also my strengths. I would see them as my fault for years. I no longer do. He will always see them as failing, none of our relationship breakdown was his fault. Realsing and accepting he is a narcissist, was a step to ending the relationship, seeing his actions as gas-lighting and coercive control added the gravity I needed to pull away.
I have to stop myself from saying, what was my part in the failure of my marriage these days. In the end, I worked hard to save my marriage for years, he didn’t and that was the problem.
Daizy Frazer 