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Thursday, June 7, 2012

When Silence is not Golden

My (almost ex)husband with whom I never never gained access or achieved genuine intimacy pretty much refused to talk to me about anything not brought up by him. I found this to be lonely, painful, humiliating, a reflection of my own unworthiness. Disturbingly, I embraced the challenge to make myself worthy.
I was rarely shown eye contact or a smile unless it was part of an initiative. And never a comforting word of support or loyalty.
I would speak to him and wait. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he would ask. I would reply, "because I want you to say something". He'd ask with resignation and irritation what I'd like for him to say.
And that's how we lived when we weren't raging at each other or promising to be entirely different people.
I am so grateful to know the name for this and to have been shown the solution. No longer soldiering through the long march to death that was our marriage, I accept the futility of hoping for and trying to experience what was never to be. I neither caused nor imagined this painful dynamic. Now I am free to stop participating in the abuse and destruction of (myself and)my children's parents.
I am free to live life and to grow into the type of woman, mother, daughter, and friend I am meant to be.

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