In My 20s I Thought My Husband and I Were Exactly Alike

In my 40s I realized we were complete opposites

I met my husband in college and throughout our years of dating, my mother used to say, “I’ve never seen two people who get along so well.”

It was true.

My then-boyfriend and I didn’t really argue.

It turns out, there was a reason for this but I’ll get to that in a second.

I mistakenly believed that the absence of conflict was for one reason.

We were so much alike.

My brain in my 20s rationalized the phenomenon this way. It seemed to be the only thing that made sense. After all, lots of couples I knew argued plenty at that age.

My then-boyfriend and I were well-matched.

We were pretty consistent in our similarities.

We were both Irish. We were both Catholic. We both had business degrees. We were both in sales. We were both extroverts. We were both overly social. We were both easygoing.

But then I turned 40.

Our marriage was struggling intensely.

I was bemoaning my latest marital strife to my bestie.

“You two are nothing alike,” she says.

“No,” I say. “We are so much alike.”

“No,” she says. “He is nothing like you.”

It turns out she was right.

You go girl for knowing your BFF and having my back!

Our marriage counselor was a psychologist and the longer I went the more I uncovered about the two of us. My husband agreed to go for about eight months and then never returned.

I continued to go alone.

I discovered that my husband and I were extremes.

He was one extreme and I was the other.

He was a diagnosed empathy-lacking narcissist.

I was an overly caring enabler.

One of us felt nothing.

The other one of us felt too much.

One of us couldn’t feel the pain, wants, or needs of anyone but himself. The other could feel the pain, wants, and needs of anyone enough to want to fix them.

It turns out the similarities I mistook in my 20s were something else entirely.

You could call them labels.

Being Irish, being Catholic, business professionals, extroverts, etc.

They were descriptors.

They didn’t necessarily explain our emotional core.

In my 20s I thought they did. I thought they were attached to our value system. They were certainly attached to mine. Being an Irish Catholic was the foundation of how I was raised.

In my 20s I thought my husband and I had these same values.

In my 40s I realized we didn’t.

At my core, I was about God, family, and friends.

I did the right thing even when no one was watching. Because Irish Catholic mommas have a way of making you think they always are. I was raised in an overly caring empathetic family of first responders who risked their lives to save strangers.

I came from a family of selflessness, generosity, and kindness.

A family of natural givers.

At my husband’s core, he was about himself and money.

Not only during our eventual divorce but throughout our marriage. Those were his two priorities. He didn’t feel the pain of others or knock himself out for anyone. He went to work and then to parties.

Our exteriors were similar.

Our interiors were polar opposites.

My bestie had been right.

When my mother used to say, “She never saw two people who got along so well,” she was missing something.

What she should have said is, “Colleen your whole life you’ve wanted everyone around you to be happy. Is it possible you’re getting along so well because you are discarding what’s important to you to make sure someone else is getting what’s important to him?”

This is what pleasers and fixers do.

They backseat much of what they want to accommodate the person who continually wants the driver's seat. It’s an innate tendency of someone who is accustomed to pleasing, fixing, and rescuing.

In my mother’s defense, it was a different generation.

It was a different time.

People weren’t as self-aware of relationship issues.

She probably believed what I believed. That my then-boyfriend and I were well-suited for one another. I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise if it weren’t for marriage counseling and a psychologist who honed in on who my husband and I were at our core.

That while our exteriors were similar.

Our interiors were polar opposites.

My husband was one extreme and I was the other.