Making My Parents the Enemy

The first gift from the narcissistic ex

It was something he did even before we got married. I had only known him for a few months, and really, even then, didn’t know him at all. But, I was 18. I thought I knew everything, right?

I didn’t know what a red flag was. I didn’t know there were people who actually didn’t have my best interest at heart. I didn’t know that my sweet little bubble of a life (not always…but) was not the way the outside world worked.

It wasn’t. And he didn’t have my best interests at heart. However, I had no idea.

We had discussed getting married in the Spring of ’94. It seemed like the right thing to do. I was game.

But one day, he surprised me, coming out of one of his classes, walking straight at me (kinda weird-like) and saying, simply, “Marry me in December!” This was September.

There were hundreds of people walking by us or sitting on the benches inside BYU’s Humanities building where we both had most of our classes. I said, “Yes”. Of course I did. What else was there to say?

I called my mom. No answer. I called my Grams. She answered. We talked and she was excited for me. Both my Gramps and she had met him that summer before when I flew him in for a week to meet the “fam”.

Within a week’s time, however, I would not be talking to my mother again until I went home from school at Christmas break…to get married.

We started to plan things right away. There wasn’t much time. My parents were in some serious financial straits, due to my father’s business just launching. They were practically living on a loan and credit cards…with 9 children! (Dad’s business was amazingly successful and he retired about 15 years later.)

But…every time I got on the phone with my mom, she was very resistant to the idea of getting married to a stranger. My dad and she had courted for years before getting married, gotten through college and had careers. They were not “normal” for their generation who grew up in the Midwest, and first-gen college attendees.

I didn’t think he was a stranger. Her fear-filled words were impossible for me to understand. I cried a lot when I was on the phone with her. I was just trying to make everyone happy. I didn’t know that there was a real risk. I thought she must be over-reacting.

Of course, I learned differently over many, many hard years.

What I did know in that moment was one thing: I had no idea how to keep HIM happy and HER happy at the same time. My dad was completely MIA, busy with the business and annoyed with my choice.

The lack of excitement on her part made no sense to me. But I’ll talk about that in another blog.

What happened next was confusing as hell, but I rolled with it. My to-be husband banned me from talking to my mother. He decided that he would be the one who talked to her and would relay messages.

He would talk to her about the reception, the travel plans, the food and even my dress. Luckily, my roommate was making my dress for her final project for her fashion design class.

No matter, he would talk to mom and then talk to me…thus avoiding all conflict. She was not about to get after him. He would not tolerate any kind of questioning of his brilliant ideas. His gift as a wordsmith was and is still most useful to him.

So, three months later, I married him, LDS-style, in Chicago on a blustery, cold day. It was a strange time. I don’t remember it, really, except for the photos, most of which I burned last year.

I married a man who was totally broke, had no idea what he wanted to be when he grew up (this was assuming he ever would), with no car, in full-time school, and who had a part-time job. He had never in his life cared for anyone but himself. But I didn’t know that. Nor did I know what that meant.

It was a totally up-hill battle from there. I fell into a deep depression within weeks of being married. And looking back, there is no doubt as to why that happened. I was in a relationship where my friends, who had been mostly guys, were no longer a part of my life. I was in a relationship where I rarely even saw my spouse. I was in a relationship in which I was alone, living alone, basically, but tied to someone who came and went as he pleased.

Rinse, repeat, for 25 years. There you have it.

In taking the phone away even before we got married, he told me with words and actions, that my parents were not “safe” for me to communicate with. They were judgmental and not going to be helpful to us.

And this kind of rhetoric continued for as long as we were together. Even though my father was the one who bought us our first car, got us into our home, supported his perpetual student-hood, and kept us fed and clothed.

Yeah, they weren’t safe.

This was the first gift. And it continued until I finally, finally, had had enough.