3 Years > 10 Years

Ten years of being married. Jacob and I said our wedding vows ten years ago. Legally, we were married. According to the church, we were married. The rings on our fingers said we were married. But I was no wife. I was a monster. How in the world, and more importantly, why in the world, did this man stay with me? Constantly walking on eggshells, choosing silence over speaking because anything he said was wrong, and letting me do anything I damn well pleased because it just wasn’t worth the argument that turned into fighting- physical fighting. Specifically, me physically fighting. I need it to be very clear, this man has never hit me. Regardless of the number of times I deserved it. Sure, he had grabbed my hands or arms to keep himself from being hit, but he never, ever, harmed me. But most nights I wished he would have.

Anything I could pick a fight over, I was sure to do it. Several times he’d asked what was wrong with me and I simply couldn’t give him an answer. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know why I had these episodes of rage. Even more so, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t control it.

After several years of living in hell, a new healthcare provider enlightened me my previous provider really had no business treating my mental illness and/or prescribing the medications they did. When one med didn’t seem to work, my PCP threw in another to the mix, and another. Soon I was taking SSRIs, SNRIs, quetiapine, benzos and I’m sure a few others I can’t even remember. Some days I was a walking zombie and some days I was Jeffrey Dahmer. I literally was out of my mind. I had someone else’s mind and it was horrifying.

Once I got off the meds my behavior started to improve, but my depression and bipolar mania increased. You could say I was getting better, if you think of it as going from bat-shit crazy to intolerable. So many nights I prayed Jacob wouldn’t leave me, but I really couldn’t blame him if he did.

Fast forward to getting my meds right, getting my mind right, and seeing life in a different perspective, we have now had a marriage for three years. One of the biggest, yet smallest things I learned in therapy was to stop telling Jacob what to do and ask him to do something. It was as simpe as turning “Go get my purse out of the car,” into “hey would you mind getting my purse out of the car for me?” or instead of “you need to go pick up the groceries,” just asked, “could you go pick up the groceries for me?”

What a freaking life-changer!

And instead of assuming he knows every single trigger of my OCPD and then getting mad when he does something the wrong way, I give him insight to the things that really bother me. “Hey, I really don’t like it when you put the remote on the table that direction, could you please face it like this?” Am I absolutely nuts? Yes. But it makes such a huge difference! Instead of thinking he should just know to check the direction of the light switches, I politely asked, “Could you just make sure those switches are the way I like them?”

Crisis averted.

Three years I’ve been doing this now. HOLY COW. Three years blogging, three years of improving and three years of a real marriage. Thank you Jesus, Joseph, and Mary for helping that man stay married to me for ten years, when seven of them were not great. Here’s to 10 more!