Happy Together

Something significant happened last night. I had an emotional breakthrough. And it didn't cost hundreds in counseling fees – just a $25 date night (oh, and a decade of unnecessary struggle). Apparently, 30 is the year I'm supposed to get all my shit together. ha

Most of my lifelong struggle with depression stems from my feelings of loneliness, which of course is a result of being so different from the people where I live. Feeling lonely and depressed over being different has just been my normal all my life. One of my first memories of feeling different was during a 5^th grade mock presidential election. I was one of the very, very few people who voted Al Gore. Anytime I wonder how I turned out to be so politically different than the community I grew up in, I always think back to that 5^th grade election – how badly I wanted to save Earth and how alone I felt when I learned I was the minority. It has always been a significant memory for me.

Anyone that understands the struggle with depression knows about intrusive thoughts. Unfortunately, I have an intrusive thought that has always led me to struggle in my marriage and mental health. That intrusive thought is that I feel that my husband would be happier with someone else. This intrusive thought started early in the relationship when he told me that his parents told him that they thought I was changing him into someone he wasn't. He was upset because he felt like his parents really didn't know him at all. I was upset because he told me he left without saying anything to defend me or himself, which made me believe that he agreed with his parents because I cannot fathom not telling someone they are wrong about me when they are wrong about me. I remember this clearly because it was one of our first big fights, of which there are so few, and I nearly broke up with him because of it. Ever since, the idea that I changed him into someone his family doesn't like, and therefore he would have been happier and better off marrying someone else, has been an intrusive thought I struggle with. Anytime I start thinking suicidal thoughts, its always been around this intrusive thought. My insecurity about this has come up time and time again in our marriage; he has told me probably a million times its not true but I have always needed repeated reassurance and still never fully believed him. I cannot imagine how frustrating that is to him, to not be believed, for years!, yet he patiently reminds me each time that he is who he says he is, he has always been the same and he didn't change for me, and he is happy with me.

Tonight we had a date night. We were discussing the election, talking about where we might dream of moving to where we may better fit in, when I asked him what was the very first election he remembered. Although my husband is a sensitive, feeling man, he rarely likes to discuss or dwell on the past, and besides sharing that he never felt like he belonged or that he was generally not liked by others, there was never anything traumatic, nothing so particularly significant from his point of view that needed discussed about his past, so it wasn't unless I thought to ask a pinpointed question about his past that his past was discussed. So, back to the question I asked him- what was the first election he remembered, and he said, “When I was in middle school. I voted Democrat.” He couldn't even remember the name of the guy, but he explained that he remembered because when his friend found out, he teased him relentlessly. When he asked about it at family holiday that year, he remembered an aunt telling him that if he was a Christian then he should vote Republican, a significant memory for him in feeling shamed for being different. Then, he told me that in his first presidential election, he voted Obama. I asked him, “How did I not know that?” He reminded me that he had told me once before. I sat and thought about it for a moment, and then the memory came back suddenly and clearly. It was on our second date. It was significant because I was prepared to not continue dating him or vice versa when I decided to tell him that I was a Democrat. Although I remembered the conversation, remembered that was the first time he shared with me how different he felt from his family, and how he told me it absolutely was not a deal breaker for him that I was a Democrat … I forgot his disclosure that he voted Obama. Strange how the brain forgets. So as I have been sitting here typing this I am asking myself, how? how in the world could I forget that? And the answer is trauma.

For those that need catching up – when I met my husband, I had just gotten out of a very abusive relationship. The interesting thing about that relationship is that the boy I was with was not the only person to abuse me. His parents were as equally emotionally abusive to me as he was, if not more so in the beginning of our relationship. His parents, especially his mother, constantly accused me of not truly loving her son and of trying to make their son be someone he was not not only behind my back but to my face. There was a reason for this – I was a vegetarian and told him I wasn't willing to date a meat-eater when he asked me out, mostly because I wanted an easy “out” or way to say “No” to him. I was in no shape to be in a relationship as I had just had my heart broken by someone I had loved for years. I never expected him to offer to adopt a whole new lifestyle but he told me he would become a vegetarian, and so we began dating. Very stupid on my part, I know. So, although his parents' abuse was inexcusable, nor did I force him into that decision, it was based in reality that our relationship started terribly and it certainly could seem to an outsider that I was forcing him to be someone he was not. So I had it thrown at me quite frequently, first by his parents, then by him, and even by his friends. So, his mother cursed at me and insulted me quite regularly. As the abuse worsened over the course of our relationship, when my ex would begin gaslighting me and insulting me, his parents would join in. His mom even stood by as he locked me in a dark closet without a light once as they both shouted insults at me through the door. Just to give you a very clear picture that it was way more than just a parent that didn't like me.

So, I had a significant amount of trauma wrapped around a boyfriends' parent having this false idea that I forced or manipulated their son into changing who he was in order to be with me. So when my now-husband told me in our very new relationship that his parents said the same thing my ex'es parents said, my trauma brain reacted in a the way trauma brains react. So, I understand that my previous trauma explains why I have lingered on my intrusive thought: “He would be happier with someone who didn't made him to be different” for so long, forget that important second date memory, fixate on the memory of the fight my husband and I had about what his parents said, secretly doubt who my husband really is, and convince myself that I cannot trust my husband's word. But now, I do.

After discussing this all with my husband last night, he asked, why does him voting for Al Gore in middle school or Obama before he met me make such a difference, when he has been telling me our entire relationship who he is. Quite simply... its proof for my logical brain. Concreteness. It is more than him just saying it, which could be a lie, but rather, it's an action – two actions – that validate what he is saying. No, I don't have the actual votes he cast in my hand as physical proof, but he gave me very detailed recollections of these memories that tell me they are the truth. When you spent as much time being emotionally abused and gaslighted as I did, you don't fully trust others and you don't trust yourself. There is always that little voice in the back of my head saying, “Too good to be true. That's not the truth. This isn't real.” I am just waiting for the tables to turn, for my husband to stop pretending to be nice and loving, waiting for the abuse to come. Each year of our marriage, the voice has gotten less and less loud, but as irrational as it is, it is still there. See how trauma works? Creeps into so many cracks everywhere in your life for years to come.

I digress to say that I have struggled with this for ten years, which probably would have been fixed a whole lot earlier had my husband and I had affordable health insurance that covered mental health services so we could have gone to marriage counseling. Instead, it took ten years and a simple date night conversation inspired by the presidential election loss of the worst president in our lifetime. Ironic.

So, learning that my husband voted for a Democrat as a child in a mock election, that he was feeling just as lonely and different as I was after that same election, that he voted for a Democrat again in his first presidential election as an adult, despite his upbringing and classmates teasing, despite his extended family insinuating that in order to be a Christian you have to vote Republican and knowing how important his faith is to him and the pressure that must have put on him.... I know now my husband has always been who he is. I know now that I did not force, persuade, or influence my husband to change his political ideals in any way. He has always been him, just as I have always been who I am, and we were just lucky enough to be introduced so that we could marry and be lonely Democrats(ish) in a highly conservative area, together.

Knowing with certainty that I did not change him is going to allow me to believe him when he says he is happy with me. Why? Because even if he had never met me, he would still be who he is, still feel like he doesn't belong, still feel different, and I am not the reason for it as I have thought for the past ten years. I am not naive to think that the intrusive thought that I have spent the last 10 years listening to and struggling with will disappear just like that. But this new and remembered information, with its concreteness, will help me challenge and defeat it each and every time it pops into my head, and trust me, it pops up a lot. I don't even know how to describe the relief I am experiencing to have such a powerful tool that may finally give me the upper hand in battling my depression.

There may be some people who get upset if I share this writing. So here is where qualify it. I am not writing this to cast any shade, but I am telling my whole truth as I experienced it. I am telling my truth for others to know so that I can make it real not only in my mind but in the minds of others, incase I ever need to reach out to a friend or simply re-read this published writing, when I begin doubting again. I am telling my truth and sharing it with others because I think it may have some value to others. I think this piece of writing shows a very real effect of trauma and how it continues to impact lives decades after the fact. I think this piece of writing tells a story of a successful marriage. I think this piece of writing is an applauding piece that shows just how amazingly patient, loving and committed my husband has been to me despite me and my baggage rarely making it easy on him. I am sharing it because it is pivotal. Pivotal in my marriage, pivotal in my mental health going forward, and I want to shout it from the rooftops that I am on a journey to being free of something that has imprisoned me for far too long.

And lastly, this is where I give my advice to parents of sons and daughters that are entering new relationships with people you may not like – your opinions about your children's relationship or significant others don't need to be said to them. Do not meddle in their relationships unasked. Just don't. If you raised them well and have a good relationship with your child, they will come to you when you are needed or your opinion is wanted. If you don't have a good enough relationship for that to happen, then you really don't have a place to stick your nose into their relationships. Although my previous traumas made something said to my husband into something much bigger than it was, what was said was still completely unnecessary and unsolicited. If that something unnecessarily said had just never been said in the first place, my trauma could not have snowballed into an intrusive thought that would effect my marriage for a decade and lead me to struggle with suicidal ideations. Or maybe the same intrusive thought would have developed, but it certainly would have had a whole lot less fuel to burn. Now obviously, I have been through much, much worse than a boyfriend's parent making the mistake of telling their son they don't like his girlfriend from a place of misguided love and concern. I stopped being mad about it and forgave them a long time ago and feel I have an amiable relationship with my in-laws; they don't have to like me for us to be kind. But, I have never forgotten that they don't like me, and obviously it has had long-term consequences of which they could not have predicted. I don't blame them for the snowballing effect my trauma had on what they said. They didn't know it would have that effect. But that is the point – you just don't know what an uninvited opinion about your child's relationship will turn into. I repeat – Do NOT tell your children that you do not like their significant other. Just don't. If they are happy, you are happy for them. The end.

And for the record, we have always, always, always been very, very, very happy together.