I Tried to Fix Our Marriage, But We Couldn’t be Fixed

How I recognized that it was time to let go.

The first time my husband and I went for couple counseling was within the first year of our marriage.

The counselor stated that my husband appeared to have no conscience. That was alarming. I should have realized at that moment that there was nothing I could do to make the problems in our relationship go away.

Obviously I brought my own baggage to the marriage. Everybody does. I had rejection issues due to my mother’s adoption. My dad’s repressive, religious upbringing left me with a reticence and slight eccentricity that I have never shaken off.

But my husband was a pathological liar who told me he had a sister who had died (he didn’t) and that all of my friends (and our baby) hated me.

Red flags aplenty.

The problem was we were already married. And for me, those vows meant something. I wanted our marriage to work. I fought for it. It was my idea to go for counseling that time. And the next time. And the next. He wouldn’t take it seriously. He would sit on the couch pouting and pursing his lips as if he was using all of his energy to bite back the truth, to conceal who he really was, and keep it contained.

When the fairy tale ends

During our courtship and marriage he would often say the right things, do the right things. There seemed to be genuine sentiment in the carefully worded birthday and anniversary cards and his inclusion of me in his group of friends.

But then I would realize that I was just there as his trophy wife. As long as I made him look good and behaved myself I was allowed to be present. If I didn’t conform precisely to how he wanted me to be, that’s when all hell broke loose.

But only behind closed doors, after the party ended.

If I didn’t laugh at his constantly repeated “jokes”, often at my expense, he would sulk for days. He would rage at me for disagreeing with him on anything. This was most noticeable if he was boasting about some amazing dish he had cooked and I dared to point out that I had contributed to the cooking of it.

My fairy tale prince turned into an ogre.

Empty gestures are exactly that — empty

He always bought me roses. Over the years they came to mean nothing to me. They angered me ultimately because he didn’t love me in any sense of the word that normal people know it to mean. Everything was for show, it was all a facade. None of it was real.

In the last throes of our marriage, he told me the reason he had always refused to engage with the counseling was because I might find out that he didn’t really love me when we got married. Thanks for that.

That final blow didn’t change anything, except that I was intrigued to hear that this was how he thought he had really felt when he was expressing his love so vocally and so fervently. He was so out of touch with his own feelings and behavior that he had no real understanding of love as the rest of us know it.

When it’s always all about them

After we separated he called my sister and asked her what he should do to win me back. She suggested he write me a letter telling me how he felt.

He wrote me a letter telling me he would be devastated to lose me. It was all about what he would be losing, not one word of it acknowledged the years of pain he had caused me or attempted to make amends or figure out how to set it right again.

He made a mix CD for me with all of his favorite love songs on it. He love bombed me in a way that surpassed his prior outpourings. He wept.

He went to speak to my doctor and my father, because he couldn’t fathom why I would want to leave him. After all, according to him, he provided everything I could ever need or want. (Apart from love and affection which he never gave me).

To any outside observer he was a hurt and desperate man trying to win his wife back. But I knew he was simply baiting the traps with his best bait to entice me back into the cage. And for once he didn’t succeed.

I had finally figured out that the only way he would ever “allow me” to leave would be if he could play the victim and place the blame for the break-up firmly on my shoulders. So I handed him the reason.

Recognize when it’s time to give up trying

He asked me if I would give us another shot if his new relationship didn’t work out.

But I knew by then that the tragic, broken marriage we had couldn’t ever be fixed. I knew it already in those early days but he wouldn’t let me walk away. It has taken me years to recover from the damage the marriage did to me. To my self-worth.

My sense of self was eroded until I was so empty, I was just a feather on the breeze. My hair was falling out, my health was failing. I was literally falling apart.

When you are abused it changes you, in some ways for the better. I read an article suggesting that we should be grateful to our narcissistic abusers because they make us appreciate the life beyond that relationship in a way that other people can never understand.

I can agree with that on a certain level, although the gratitude will always be tempered with regret. Of all of the people I know, I am one of the more optimistic and cheerful ones. I do find joy in the mundane and everyday. I treat each day as a precious gift.

When you are finally released from a cage you relish your freedom in a way that the already free can never comprehend.

This is what you hang on to. The knowledge that you are free, that you escaped captivity and the future is yours and yours alone.

Some things can’t be fixed, and sometimes you need to stop trying.