Today's Writing Prompt: What He Said

Today I was inspired by this blog prompt:  What is something someone told you about yourself that you never forgot?

I always wonder what the author of those prompts is thinking when a prompt like this is offered. Was the writer hoping I would come up with something inspirational?  That was not my first thought when I saw the prompt.  Like the "Dark Teacher" prompt, I had a strong immediate reaction and decided to create a post about the first thought that popped into my head.

You never compromise

Have you ever watched a movie or television show, or read a book, where one character tells off another and it causes that character to take a long look at her life and she changes for the better?

I don’t think this happens so dramatically in real life, but someone did tell me something once that stayed with me, sometimes for the better, but possibly also for the worse.  Sometimes the people who point out your worst faults are no better than you are yourself, but it doesn’t make them wrong.  The end of a relationship, no matter how much that relationship needed to end, can make you confront ugly truths about yourself.

This is going to be a long post because I have a hard time writing about this without discussing the backstory.  There is no TL:DR for it. You have been warned.

So let’s begin the story and go back in time twenty-five years.  I was twenty-six years old and dating a man whom I still believe is a kind and decent person whose heart was in the right place. Unfortunately he was also deeply insecure and didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand the give and take of relationships.  Without going into the details of his personal life, I will simply say he was traumatized growing up in a dysfunctional family.  I don’t believe he ever truly dealt with what happened to him.  He wanted to believe he had a happy childhood in a loving family (and I have no doubts it was a loving family despite it all).  He wanted to bear those who hurt him no ill will.  He refused to believe he hadn’t dealt with it all.  He probably needed far more therapy than he ever had, but he thought he was fine if he took his meds and simply lived his life as he saw fit.

The one thing he admitted was he had a strong fear of abandonment.  He believed a romantic relationship, and eventually marriage, would alleviate these fears.  It appeared he wanted his female partner to supply the security he didn't have growing up.  When we began dating he “love bombed” me into a committed relationship right from the start - a clear sign of his neediness.  He had an intense physical attraction to me (so its seems on top of everything else, he had undiagnosed vision problems) and he translated that into my being “The One” even though he barely knew anything about me and had no idea if we were compatible.  He made it clear in both overt and subtle ways that he expected me to ease his fears of abandonment.  What I would come to realize over time was the only way I could alleviate his fears was to fulfill his childish need for all my time and attention.

It was clear right from the beginning we had different ideas about our life goals and relationship goals, but he was so eager to prove to me we were right for each other, he would say anything to make me commit to him and stay.  I understood if we wanted a life together there would have to be some sacrifices.  I am not immovable about everything. I knew we needed to come to some compromises on certain issues.  I was willing to have these discussions.

Some examples:

He was looking for immediate commitment and wanted me to move in with him at some unspecified time in the near future.  I told him I am not comfortable with cohabitation and that I wanted to be engaged first.  I also said I wouldn’t consider marriage until we had been dating two years.  He was not happy about this.  We agreed to move in together as soon as we were engaged and I agreed we could date one year instead of two before the engagement.

He lived an hour and a half away from me in central Connecticut and worked in Hartford.  I lived in Westchester and worked in Greenwich.  I didn’t want to give up my job.  He didn’t want to give up his job.  I also didn’t want to be too far away from my family or my friends or my horses.  We agreed we would move to a town between our two current homes such as Danbury, CT. 

I am not a homebody.  I like to go out and do things.  I have many time-consuming hobbies.  He is a homebody who likes to spend his spare time at home watching TV and renting movies.  Going out consists of going to bars and restaurants with groups of friends.  I warned him right from the start I am a busy person and wouldn’t be devoting all my evenings and weekends to him. I'm also not much of a bar person and I hate clubs. He only asked that I gave what time I did have to him, and if I would consider staying in with him once in a while. 

For the first few months we made it work even though there were plenty of times when it became clear we had different values and different relationship expectations.  I did my best to try to manage those expectations and warn him I’m not perfect.  I told him not to put me on a pedestal all the time because we were still getting to know each other. There were times when I felt we lacked compatibility and I told him outright.  He would cry and promise to do better.  He refused to believe our relationship wasn’t meant to be.

I admit it was easy for me to go along with this because I was almost as insecure as he was.  When we began dating I was still reeling from the heartache of my previous breakup.  I was afraid no man would ever want to commit to me.  Here was somebody who swore he loved me and wanted to marry me no matter what I said or did.  I stayed despite the voices in my head telling me this wasn’t going to work.

One day everything changed when he said the words that still haunt me.  It happened after we had been dating several months and I had grown a bit too comfortable believing he would love me no matter what.

It was the anniversary of his father’s death.  He went to Arlington to visit the grave every year and this year he wanted me to go with him. We made a whirlwind trip.  We left in the late afternoon, went to the cemetery right after breakfast, then turned around and went home.  In other words, we drove to DC and back in under 24 hours.  He wanted to take my car (much newer than his) and had me drive the entire way down there.  We were obviously both a bit tired, stressed, and peevish by the time we were on the ride home.

During the ride home the conversation turned to my living situation.  I was still living at home with my mother and was itching to have my own place.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t making enough money and the money I did make went to paying off student loans and making car payments.  I’m sure Ex was upset that I was talking about having my own place rather than moving in with him, so he became highly critical of my excuses for not moving out.  He said I needed to be willing to commute longer distances to work so I could live in a cheaper area (good point, except cost of gas and wear and tear on my car would have to factor in).  He said I needed to sell all my stuff so I could use that money for rent (I don’t think I had enough valuable stuff to make a month’s rent if that much).  He said I should sell my nice new car and buy a beater I wouldn’t need to make payments on (my car was leased).  He said I should give up my gym membership and be willing to be a little fat. (He had me on that one, but I reminded him he seemed to love my "hot" body and how happy would he be if I were a "little fat"?).  Here he was trying to be helpful and all I was doing was come up with stubborn excuses.  That’s when he said it.

“You never compromise.” 

He went on a rant about how I always want things my way.  I never give in.  I want my life to be a certain way and I won’t consider anyone else’s feelings or needs. “ You need to compromise.”  He said it over and over.

After such a long day we didn't exactly part on good terms.  I dropped him off at his place and drove my exhausted butt back home.  I think he fully expected me to break up with him.  That's when everything changed.  He learned he could tell me off and I wouldn’t leave him.  I also learned something new and terrible about myself. 

I was properly chastised, or so I liked to think.  I knew I had to make some effort and be more flexible if I wanted to make the relationship work.  We were planning to spend our lives together.  Shouldn’t I figure out a way to make us both happy?  I did my best to be more pliant as the months went on.  You pick the movie.  You pick the restaurant.  If he grew frustrated with my lack of decision making, I would remind him that I was trying to compromise and let him have his way sometimes.  His response was, “I need you to compromise on the big things.”

Should I compromise on the big things?  Aren’t they the things that matter?  How much should I compromise on the things that matter?  Weren't we both working on those big things?  Didn't he say he was okay with the fact that I had a busy life and couldn't always give him my entire weekend?  Didn't I agree to move closer to his job when we married?  What was enough?  

It wasn't enough.  A few months later he broke up with me in frustration.  He realized I was never going to change. I still wanted to live where I wanted to live, maintain my hobbies, and hold on to feminist beliefs.  I tried to compromise, but I guess he needed more.  He didn’t want me to meet him halfway.  He wanted me to give in entirely. 

What was the problem here?  A nice, but mentally unhealthy man decided I wasn’t going to devote my life to him in a way that would make him feel secure and loved, then blamed me for being too stubborn.  In fact, I'm sure it could be argued he was unintentionally gaslighting me. Why should I let that stay with me all these years?

Because he wasn’t wrong.

My stubbornness was so bad even the desperate needy guy didn’t want me.  Who else had I turned off in my life?

Shortly after the relationship ended, I had a conversation with my previous ex whom I was still friendly with and talked to occasionally.  I told him how my boyfriend declared I was too uncompromising to be in a relationship with him.

He said to me, “You are the one person I know who is more stubborn than I am.” 

He said it with a tone of awe – admiration even – but I couldn’t take it as a compliment.  He and I had broken up over a year ago and he was living on the other side of the country.  There was enough time, as well as physical and emotional distance between us that he could look back fondly on my worst qualities.  He didn’t have to deal with it directly anymore.  I'm sure a year earlier he didn't think my stubbornness was so cute.

I tried to remind myself  I wasn’t so uncompromising all the time.  I had been willing to move across the country for my previous ex, even if I wasn’t willing to move a mere seventy miles north for his successor.  Then I reminded myself that I wasn't so compliant about moving as I wanted to believe. During that relationship I let that ex know all the time I preferred not to move out there.  I also said I wouldn’t make that long-distance move unless he quit smoking (because I can make someone give up an addiction through the sheer force of my will).

I remembered all too well how in the final months of that relationship I did a lot of griping and sniping about his smoking habit and the fact that he shouldn’t be living so far away.  I didn’t want to move and therefore, he should be happier on the east coast (even though at the time he was perfectly happy living where he was living).  He had every reason to want to get out of that relationship.  

My musings didn’t stop there.  I was soon looking back at other past relationships.

There was my college sweetheart.  He was a truly funny, generous, and sweet guy whom I adored.  He checked so many of my boxes.  The problem is no man can check all of them.  I had way too many expectations about him.  I did to him what my most recent ex had done to me (but in a much less extreme way).  I think I often came down way too hard on a good man whose only mistake was having normal human flaws.  No wonder he was eager to let things end at graduation.

Then there was the guy I dated in my early years of college.  He was an arrogant, close-minded, and paranoid man who was constantly trying to prove his own superiority.  Our relationship was a constant game of one-upmanship.  Each of us was always trying to prove who was smarter, who was funnier, whose life was more interesting, and whose friends were weirder.  If you are going to ask me why I would blame myself for not making things work with a jerk like that, I will point out that he moved on from me easily.  This arrogant jerk ghosted our relationship and immediately met someone else.  They married and are still married to this day.  Of all my exes, he has been married to his first wife the longest.  Which one of us had the huge character flaws?

I mentally went all the way back to high school and my first boyfriend.  It always seemed we got along well.  We had a lot of fun together, but we were always having stupid petty arguments about stupid petty stuff.  Whenever we had a difference of opinion, I always had to be right.  He ended up cheating on me and dumped me for the other girl.

It seemed no matter what type of man I dated, I was always the architect of my own heartbreak.  

I didn't pursue any new relationships for months and did a lot of soul searching in that time.  I wasn't sure if I was capable of finding lasting love.  I would eventually ruin everything.  I told myself that if I wanted to start dating again, I would have to expect the new love to crash and burn at some point.  Men fell in love with me easily, but they never stayed in love with me.  I needed to resign myself to a life of serial monogamy.

Up to that point I had always believed I would marry one day.  After that last relationship, I realized marriage didn't seem like a good proposition.  Marriage required compromise.  It meant giving up my ideas of how I wanted my life to go. Marriage required living your life according to someone else's plans, or at least coming up with a plan that satisfies neither one of you.  I was better off being single.  I wasn't the marrying kind. 

When I felt ready to start dating again months later, I waffled between a determination for self-improvement and the belief my relationships wouldn't work anyway, so I might as well be my worst self all the time.  When I met Kevin, he had no idea he was tied up in my self-improvement campaign (or lack thereof).  Did I want to be a better person for him, or did it matter since I would eventually let the beast out and the relationship would crash and burn like the rest of them?

Did I improve, or is Kevin simply more tolerant than anyone I ever dated before?  To this day I still sometimes ask myself that.  

Kevin is a solitary man who could handle it well if I had other things to do and places to go.  It didn't hurt that he started becoming interested in horses as the relationship progressed and he took up riding.  He couldn't resent all the time I spent at the barn if he was at the barn with me. As an actor himself, he couldn't blame me for wanting to perform and didn't resent the time I spent in rehearsals. Once he started getting back into theater, it became more time together. 

It wasn't always about time though.  I can be critical.  I can be defensive.  I can be argumentative.  I remember one time in the early months of this relationship, I criticized or disagreed with something he said, and he asked, "Can't I do anything right?"  I know he was joking, but I saw the truth in jest.  I had come down unnecessarily hard on him and it must have hurt a bit. The question implied I criticized him often. I needed to do better.  I can think of so many times I tried to be kinder, tried to be more compliant, but then would have a fit of temper when I couldn't take it anymore.  Did I manage to work out a happy medium, or did he learn to let it all roll off his back?   

I think there are some ways I learned to compromise.  The biggest example is that I learned to shut up.  Kevin is a man of few words.  Like Mr. Ed, he never speaks unless he has something to say.  I know my tendency for incessant talking can annoy him.  He doesn't like it when I lapse into a story.  I have learned to can the chatter and have the endless conversations with those who like to talk.  I have learned to see the value of companionable silence. Isn't that a compromise?

I like to think we are both doing something right since we have been happily married for over twenty years now.  I am lucky to have someone like Kevin by my side.  Can I call it luck, or did I actually put some work into this marriage?

All I know is that some nights Kevin leaves me.  Sometimes he tells me he just can't take it anymore.  He's not happy.  He can't deal with me.  Sometimes there is even another woman involved.  He leaves me for someone who is not only prettier, but kinder and smarter and more mature as well.  

I wake up in a panic and see him there beside me, ignorant of the evils I ascribe to him in my dreams.  I try to relax and remember none of it was true, but I hear that voice echoing in my head.

You never compromise.