Codependency Part One: Difficulty Making Decisions in a Relationship

“You’re not going back, though, right?” My grandma asked, looking genuinely concerned that I had actually completely lost my mind.

I was sitting at her kitchen table, wondering how I’d gone 23 years of my life without appreciating how glorious showers are. I’d just gotten out of jail, where I’d spent the last 30 hours of my life. Thirty hours is a very long time to spend without taking a shower. Especially if you’re pregnant, and wearing a pair of boxers and a hole-strewn sweater the entire time, both of which probably weren’t that clean to begin with.

“Yeah, no, I don’t know,” I said, staring into my glass of iced tea. “I mean, I just want to make sure he’s ok.”

“You want to make sure he’s ok?” My grandma scoffed. “So were you just lying to get out of jail? Did you make up what you told the investigator?”

Everything I had told the investigator was true: my husband had come home at 3am to find that I’d packed my bags and was sleeping in my daughter’s room. He had barged in and demanded an explanation, and when I told him I was leaving him, he sat on my pregnant stomach, smashed my phone so I couldn’t call anyone to come get me, and had physically restrained me by pushing me and cornering me until the neighbors finally called the cops because they could hear my cries for help.

When the cops did show up, I didn’t mention that he had sat on my pregnant stomach, or pushed me around the apartment, or held me down, or broken my phone. I hadn’t wanted him to get in trouble. I just wanted to get out of there.

Meanwhile, however, my husband was calmly informing the cops that I was having some kind of delusional nervous breakdown, and that he had only been trying to get me to calm down so I didn’t hurt myself.

Now, thirty hours later, I was already considering the possibility that maybe I was just having a nervous breakdown and this was all somehow my fault. Good wives don’t pack up to leave their husbands, even if those husbands stay out until 3am and don’t answer the phone. I must have just been being dramatic… His feelings must be so hurt.

So I went back.

This cycle repeated for seven years, with every moment of clarity I ever had being quickly replaced by self-doubt and shame.

When I entered into my next relationship (just two short months after finally ending the marriage for good,) I was certain that I had grown. I was so proud of myself when I told Joey after our second date that I didn’t feel any chemistry. It’s not easy to be honest about things like that, but I’d done it. Surely this meant that I had become more assertive. …But a week later I felt guilty about it, and ended up hooking up with him while we were hanging out “as friends.”

I spent the next 3.5 years vacillating between bitterness that he wouldn’t officially move in with me, and irritation that I was with someone with whom I didn’t feel any chemistry. This led to years of me being angry, and confused, and torn on what it was that I even wanted. I talked about it in therapy, I even went to a tarot card reader. I literally had no fucking clue what the fuck I even wanted, and I just needed someone to tell me what to do.

On one hand, Joey is very laid back. He’s patient, and gracious. He’s easy to talk to. He never raises his voice. He never said a single cruel thing to me in those years, even though I gave him plenty of reasons to. Plus, despite the “lack of chemistry,” we were very sexually compatible.

On the other hand, he stayed in my house every night and ate my food, and never paid a dime of rent. He had a lot of female “friends,” including his most recent ex who he spent his first birthday of our relationship with, and who didn’t even know I existed. I caught him in several lies. I didn’t find his sense of humor funny. His hygiene left a lot to be desired, despite several conversations about it.

It took me over three years to recognize that I was so deeply unhappy in this relationship, but that I refused to leave because I felt that the fact that he was kind was enough. I really thought so little of myself that I didn’t believe I would find anyone else to tolerate me, especially now that I’m in my thirties and have two kids. I let this dilemma eat away at me for so long, constantly thinking I was deeply flawed because I wasn’t madly in love with him the way he said he was in love with me.

He’d tell me our connection was “so special,” and “so rare,” but that wasn’t true. A connection goes both ways. If our relationship was so perfect, and I was actually just a broken person who was too dumb to see it, then why wasn’t he respecting me enough to officially move in and pull his share of the weight? Why didn’t he ever talk about our future? Why did he casually lie to my face?

It’s so obvious, now, looking back with a little bit of perspective, but I truly could not logically weigh this situation whilst in the middle of it. I didn’t trust myself enough. I’d lost every part of who I was over the course of three years by constantly suppressing my instincts, and gaslighting myself into thinking that everything that was wrong was because of me and my issues.

I know that no relationships are perfect, and that they all require communication and compromise. However, it’s hard to communicate when you’re so locked out of your own heart that you aren’t even aware of what you want or need anymore.

But that’s easy to say now. When I’m single, I am rational and productive. I do yoga, I write, I clean my house, and I make measured decisions. All of this goes right out the window though as soon as I catch a whiff of the D. The only way I know how to get better at this, is to figure out why I doubt myself so hard in love.

Why is it so hard to communicate a sensitive emotion instead of just swallowing it along with some douchebag’s cum?