Excerpt Twenty-Two: Confidence Boosted or Confidence Busted?
August 22, 2008
I can remember early in our marriage we would do everything together. We would do the grocery shopping together. We would go clothes shopping, for me, together. He would suggest what I should try on, and me, wanting him to like the way I looked, I would try on and often buy the clothes he suggested. (When we shopped for him, he rarely liked my choices; he got what he picked out.) At that point it wasn’t that I was losing myself and my personality in his decisions, it was rather that I did not have confidence in myself and so I was following his confidence, his perception of me. Besides, I wanted to look good for him. It wasn’t that he was controlling me, I was enabling his recommendations. Now that I think of his forceful personality, it’s not necessarily that I did not have confidence (wow, what a concept), it was that he had an inordinate amount of confidence. So, pitted against his utter confidence, my standard waverings stood out and became something for him to direct and ultimately control.
Why didn’t I have self-confidence, or rather why didn’t I have enough self-confidence to stand up to him. Was I following what I thought was the role a wife should take upon herself? Was I following the way my mother had acted with my father? She let him make all the decisions, or so it seemed. She waited for him and was guided by him. It seemed to work for them, why did it become oppressive for me? Was I, the independent daughter who went off to Israel alone at 20, in reality not independent, was I looking for guidance? And did this man simply take advantage of that? Or, was there no other way to be with him, except with his usurping all power and control. Did I ruin the picture by eventually seeking to reassert my independence and sense of self?
I think that the marriage that we can't really know how much our parents' marriage shaped up until we get married. Like you, I found myself drowning in the "should" of my life when no one asked that of me. I also contorted my life to try and please everyone else. But I was the one applying the pressure to conform. On the path through divorce, the more I have come back to the authentic me, the better I feel and the more I sense my ex's longing in my direction.
Just a thought.
Posted by: Jennifer | August 22, 2008 at 07:04 PM
I think that the marriage that we can't really know how much our parents' marriage shaped up until we get married. Like you, I found myself drowning in the "should" of my life when no one asked that of me. I also contorted my life to try and please everyone else. But I was the one applying the pressure to conform. On the path through divorce, the more I have come back to the authentic me, the better I feel and the more I sense my ex's longing in my direction.
Just a thought.
Posted by: Jennifer | August 22, 2008 at 07:05 PM
A combination of all of the above, probably. I don't think too many of us are absolutely sure of ourselves in our 20s. We don't always know who to look for guidance.
Posted by: April | August 23, 2008 at 07:41 AM
Jennifer, the more I pushed for the divorce the nastier he became, and that is when he became verbally abusive, which certainly made my determination stronger.
April, Good point, Yes, knowing who to trust to guide us really does seem essential.
What gets me is that in the beginning of our relationship (he was 21 and I was 22) we were guiding each other. He seemed to revel in my bohemian outlook. I didn't think that that is what he would try to overtake.
Posted by: Laura of Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman | August 23, 2008 at 08:43 AM