Where to Start…?

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Winston Churchil

It’s difficult to know where to start – Do I go back to the very beginning? I don’t want this to be a series of posts bashing my soon to be ex-husband. I do want to highlight behaviour that is unacceptable – behaviour that I didn’t see as an issue because I thought there was something wrong with me.

The first time my soon-to-be Ex gave me the silent treatment I didn’t understand what was happening. It wasn’t something we did at home – by ‘we’ I mean my Mum and brothers – my family. If we fell out, then we’d get annoyed and then usually we’d end up laughing about something and it was over. Even if we didn’t end up laughing, I can’t ever remember an argument going on for days – it just wouldn’t happen. So, when I, newly married, could see that my husband was annoyed with me I asked what was up. He answered ‘nothing’. Again, I didn’t understand that – if I was asked what I was annoyed about then I’d say so – this was weird. I wouldn’t let it lie. I asked repeatedly until he blew up at me. He told me I was ‘lazy’ and his reasoning for this was because I hadn’t filled the dishwasher with the dirty dishes that he had stacked in the sink. We’d been married a few months, maybe six, and I had gotten fed up with being the only one to put things straight into the dishwasher when it was sat there empty. I’d decided (childishly, I guess), to not clear up after him – he was perfectly capable of doing it himself.

So, I listened to him shouting at me that I was lazy and how he had to come home from work and stack the dishwasher because I couldn’t be bothered to. I listened and back then I guess I still had some fight in me because I didn’t let him get away with it. I asked him who left all the dishes in the sink in the first place as it wasn’t me. I asked him who did the hoovering, changed the bed sheets, did the washing, dried the washing, put the washing away? Who did the cooking, cleaned the kitchen, tidied the living room? He was now silent. I pointed out that since we’d been married I hadn’t seen him pick up the hoover once or do any of the things that I’d mentioned so if he only had one job of stacking and emptying the dishwasher he should be thankful and shut up about it because clearly, it wasn’t me that was lazy.

He said nothing and we somehow settled into those roles of me doing everything and him doing nothing. Mainly because if I waited for him to do it, we’d be walking through knee-high deep dust on the carpet and the sheets would have changed colour and walked themselves to the washing machine.

There are so many stories – some of which I’ll share – but the thing that ties them all together is the fact that I lost myself. When I look back, I became less of that woman who would stand up for herself and more of a woman that I didn’t recognise. Someone who was scared to say anything confrontational because it would mean we wouldn’t talk for several days and ‘oh – we have that dinner to go to at the weekend, so I had better keep the peace, so it isn’t awkward….’ Or, ‘he’d said he’d come to dinner at my Mum’s and I don’t want my family to think there is anything wrong, so I’d better not rock the boat.’ I don’t even know who that woman was.

I’m so glad she’s gone.

The new and improved version has taken her place.