My relationship with my parents was rocky, generally unsatisfactory, and quite often abusive. Where I would like to provide my children instruction on several levels, including as a direct example of successful behaviors, my parents displayed an entirely different notion from what I ultimately settled on for my family.
Growing up, I learned subtly from the cues around me that the role of a wife was to make the rules and hold sway over the household. My mother was often the policymaker, the matriarch by virtue of sending down certain edicts and expecting them to be followed. Rocking the boat in any way would make waves, which meant people were going to be hurt and punished. Speaking up was heartily discouraged.
The role of the husband, in turn, was to enable any abusive behaviors by rationalizing them and minimizing their impact. We were taught that this was loyalty. In retrospect, it was his own fear of rocking the boat and making waves.
That seemed like a terribly miserable way to spend the rest of my life with a mate, and I set out to go and do exactly the same thing. Not because that is what I wanted, but because in spite of the shallow surface accoutrements I thought a suitable mate ought to include, my meter for detecting what was normal was calibrated to detect someone “normal” in the same way what I had grown up around was “normal”.
At the heart of my divorce was the fact that while I started out much like my father did, trying to keep the peace, my job as a rent-to-own collector specifically required me to be more assertive. There were behaviors with which I had always felt uncomfortable, but my newfound voice meant that I could verbalize my feelings without being combative.
This did not go over well at all, and eventually ended the marriage where it began: with tantrums and immaturity, mixed with sex. That was my “starter marriage,” and while I believed that it would outlast one of us, I introduced significant change that ultimately turned out to be a deal-breaker. My primary purpose to her was as a financially-stable enabler, and when I ceased to enable, the financial stability was of secondary importance.
I have learned quite a bit that I am certain will help me to be a better husband to my beloved than I started out for my ex-wife. Where once I would have tripped over myself trying to stay out of the way and keep the peace, I now attempt to keep the peace while standing my ground and remaining firm. She finds it exasperating in a fight that I do not budge, but when there are storms outside of our home, she finds the trust comforting. It seems stubborn and steadfast have a similar appearance from the outside depending upon the context.
But why would I have gone to all of that trouble in the first place? Because that’s what I was raised to do. Specifically, that dynamic of keeping the peace in the face of irrational or even abusive behavior permeated every part of my childhood, and did not dissipate even after I left. My brother is still oozing it out through his pores, and I feel great sympathy when he feels forced to straddle a fence to avoid angering two different sides of a disagreement.
Backtracking in time, one can see the process beginning to brew upstream long before I arrived.
In my father’s case, he learned early on to keep the peace, to avoid stirring up emotions at all costs, even at risk of failing to show up for a confrontation that was absolutely necessary. He was taught relatively normal confrontational skills for use entirely outside the home, and to keep things mellow once he came in through the door. Why? Because his father had a medical condition that could cause his heart to fail as a result of stress. Instead of killing daddy, they learned to keep quiet.
He was found by my mother, who was looking for just that exact scenario, in which the man remains calm and quiet, because the woman neglects to exercise any self control whatsoever. How did she end up thinking that this was normal? She was raised by an abusive mother, and a father who allowed it. I never got to ask him why, as he died while I was still too young to grasp the finer points. I can only theorize.
I don’t buy the argument that marriages of that sort must end in divorce. A long-lasting marriage is not one with problems or perfect people. It is simple a relationship between two people with the same level of commitment and understanding of monogamy. Given the notion that both people believed whole-heartedly that divorce was not an option, he should have been perfectly capable of putting his foot down and demanding an end to the unacceptable behaviors, such as grandstanding, tantrum throwing, and disregard for personal boundaries. My first marriage failed not necessarily because I grew out of it, but specifically because her understanding of “lifelong” was actually a euphamism for “so long as I get my way.”
My mother, witnessing the relationship between her parents, got the notion that normal consisted of a woman running around abusing and disrespecting the individuals around her, and a man desparately following behind attempting to mop up the damage. This is why girls marry men like their archetypical father: because in order to replicate their parents’ marriage, they simply need to find an appropriate actor to fill the part.
Because my grandfather was limited in his range of emotional response, my grandmother got the bulk of the work raising children and running daily household operations. My father set out to find an appropriate matriarch to run his household.
Each tries to recreate what their parents had, without being able to rationally consider that the strange behaviors they witnessed were due to a heart condition, or my maternal grandmother being left an orphan at an early age.
Indeed, it is the very break in lifelong monogamy that will enable me to be happy with my mate, by providing a fundamental break with my childhood. My children are young, and for the majority of their lives will get to see me truly happy with someone who is kind to me, and to whom I am kind and loving. They will see both of us make mistakes, and see these mistakes forgiven, but never tolerated. They will be immersed in this sort of environment, and use it as their yardstick for finding their mates.
My daughter will look for a man who reminds her of me. That is a humbling thought, and a great encouragement to be on my best behavior. My son will look for a woman who reminds him of his stepmom, someone who is loving and kind, witty and beautiful. Any less and they will simply not measure up.
