Thursday, July 17, 2008

Bad Wife.

I had a rough afternoon and night tonight. My husband and I fought. We fought over something very small and stupid, and I tried to pick my words very, very carefully to avoid a fight. It makes me crazy when that doesn't work.

He'd found this sink. He wanted to bring it home. It's a very nice sink with two basins. It would be a lovely acquisition for someone with enough space for it, which we don't have, or for someone with the means to remodel a bathroom...also not us. We have had an increasingly large pile of stuff that he's been bringing home collecting in our front and back yards. It's been bothering me. I should have said that it was bothering me. I didn't say anything, or I said very little.

Today, though, the idea of dragging home a big, heavy sink to sit in the pile of stuff in our yard was too much for me. It's too big for me to move by myself. I can't count on him to put things away. There isn't much likelihood that we'd be able to put this sink to use at any point within the next several years, as I've accomplished something pretty impressive when I manage to pay the mortgage. I didn't want to come home from work every day to look at the sink, upside down, in my front yard. I didn't want for friends and neighbors to see this big-ass manifestation of our craziness, our financial failure, like a monument on the lawn. I don't want to look like trash. I said, so, so carefully, "I don't like the idea of bringing this sink home."

He gave me a long, long lecture about what a bad wife I am. It went something like this:

You know, when people would talk about how their wives were bitchy or how they couldn't do something because their wives wouldn't like it, I'd always wonder why they'd stay in the relationship. I never could imagine living with a woman who would control me and tell me what to do or always be pissed off at me. I never thought that you'd turn out this way. I didn't think that marriage with you would be like this. I guess I just had unrealistic expectations about marriage.
HE never thought it would be this way? HE never thought that I would turn out like this? He's put off by my behavior? HIS expectations of what marriage would be like have been disappointed?

Because he's been an Ace husband. He's done it by the book. I've had the life I've always dreamed of with him. When I was a little girl growing up, I always dreamed that one day a dashing man would come along, sweep me off my feet, marry me, and then rob me, lie to me, manipulate me, frighten me, threaten me, leach off me, scream at me, blame me. It's what I always wanted!

I was astonished. I couldn't even respond for a long time. I was hurt, and appalled that he would let an idea like that enter his mind, and even more that he'd launch it from his lips, seemingly without any notion of how crazy he sounded.

I'm a good wife. I'm a good wife to the point of making myself sick. I'm good beyond reason. Asking that we please not hoard trash in our yard after months of watching it grow is not "nagging." It's not being a "bitch." It's being sane, kind of, in that it's asking for some sanity in my life.

I want him to stop showing me that this relationship isn't working. I want him to stop pointing out with these grotesqueries that my life is unmanageable, unfair, and that he treats me badly. I don't want to know that it's not possible for us to live together. I don't want to face it.

I do, though, know that I deserve better than I'm getting. I deserve respect. I don't deserve to be cursed at, denigrated, intimidated. I've worked hard to keep us afloat for a long time while he's been out of commission, and I deserve some say in the state of the living environment I pay for.

I want so, so much for this marriage to work. I don't want to have to give him up. I don't want it. But I don't want to live like this anymore, either. I'm miserable so much of the time, and I want more for me. I want to choose myself, finally. I do.

I don't think I can do it.