“Are you serious right now? I love you is what you came up with? I’ve been gone for 4 whole days and the best you can muster up is I love you? I asked you to give this a real shot. You’re not even trying. You obviously don’t care about making me happy.”
I fought back tears as I rolled over to my side of the bed in a huff. Disappointing thoughts of how I envisioned my homecoming vs. the reality flooded in. As expected, he didn’t attempt to redeem himself or play into my song and dance. Instead he sighed heavily, mumbled under his breath “Nothing will ever be good enough for you” and rolled over. Within minutes he was snoring.
I thought back to earlier that day at the airport bookstore. While perusing the self-help section, a book with a cheesy cover of a man and woman embracing on the beach caught my eye- The 5 Love Languages. Before I left for my work trip the tension between us had been thick and I had spent the past 3 nights alone, feeling vulnerable. Desperately seeking a plan for remediation, I bought the book and quickly devoured its glossy promises for a better marriage during the flight home. I had it all mapped out. I would tell him I needed “words of affirmation” to feel loved, I would give him the quiz, and then we would follow the directions and watch our marriage blossom before our very eyes. The formula was simple. There was only one problem- the formula required buy-in from both parties. This example is so classically us.
Our 14th wedding anniversary is quickly approaching. He was my first ever boyfriend. We met in Mr. Sampson’s homeroom class in the 8th grade. He was a popular football player and I was an ugly duckling with bangs and braces. We dated on and off all through high school and early college years, but even through the break-ups my heart always belonged to him. My junior year of college, while spending the summer studying abroad in Spain, I decided I didn’t want to live without him. We married three years later following graduation at 22 years old.
Like most marriages, ours has been through its fair share of ups and downs. We one hundred percent fit the cliché of “opposites attract.” We are incredibly different. So much so, there have often been times when I have questioned, and even doubted whether we were indeed meant to be. We act different, we think differently, we enjoy different things. I’m a deep thinker, he’s a practical thinker. I’m an anxious worrier, he’s relaxed and takes life in stride day by day. I’m a dreamer, my head often in the clouds, he’s a realist. I’m complicated, he’s simple. I wear my heart on my sleeve, he buries his feelings deep. Despite this, we complement each other and though we greatly contrast, we balance each other out.
But through the course of our marriage, I have been guilty of using our differences as a scapegoat for unhappiness- as a way to be angry and funnel blame onto him. I have been guilty of wishing he could see life from my point of view more often. From my high horse, I have thrown “You’re a hard man to love” and “You don’t care about making me happy” in his face more times than I can count. You might even say that for a long period of our marriage, though I’ve always been in love with him, I’ve carried a chip on my shoulder. However, the reason why has never exactly been clear to me. He has never been unfaithful, he has been my steadfast through some of the most difficult times in my life, he loves me unconditionally, and he’s a wonderful father. While he’s far from perfect, he is a good man and a good husband. But until recently, I could never pinpoint why, despite living a wonderful life together, there was always something missing.
By nature, (being a textbook Virgo) I’m a perfectionist, but by nurture- I’m a perfectionist. At a young age I began to form ideas of what I thought “perfect” looked like, and then I became relentless in my pursuit of achieving it. Once when I was about 9 or 10 years old, my grandmother had some friends over. I was playing with my dolls in the bedroom, when in the next room I overheard my name. On tiptoe I crept closer to the living room where the adults gathered, to get within earshot. Cigarette smoke danced up from the ashtrays and wine glasses clinked in chorus. The adults were singing my praises, boasting about how “grown up and mature” I was for my age. One of them chimed, “She’s as good as gold!” I sat with their words for a long while, soaking in them, rolling them around in my young mind. I was both flattered, and incredibly uneasy with their compliments, but they imprinted on me. Through my adolescence adults would continue to remark and awe at my so-called maturity. I took heed at every comment. Eventually, I would compile those acclaims and craft them into a badge of honor, inscribed meticulously “This is what good is supposed to look like.” For most of my life I’d proudly sport that shiny badge as my signature accessory.
The thing about my husband is, he was never really impressed by my shiny badge. Contrarily, he found my badge to be quite a nuisance. He doesn’t have ideas of “perfect” or give two flips about mine. He doesn’t care about Facebook statuses or taking 200 pictures to get that Instagram-worthy shot. He’s never been afraid to burst my bubble or call me on my bull. If you’re a fellow perfectionist, you know about how well that kind of opposition and resistance sits.
In my experience as a perfectionist, stubbornness comes with the territory. Adding another stubborn and headstrong person to the mix can be a potential recipe for disaster. True to forecast, our relationship has been through some very stormy seasons, but recently I’ve come to realize not all of the storms were as simple as a combination of two headstrong forces colliding.
About a year ago, my anxiety was at an all-time high and I was at an all-time low. My badge was dull, and weighing so heavily on me that some days I didn’t have the energy, much less desire to heave it out of bed. To keep appearances up I would still post nice pictures and captions of my life on social media, but in reality the glass behind the frames was shattered and the shards were cutting into me. The irony in it all is my life was actually pretty close to the ideals that I spent so long aiming to achieve. I had a great job, we were building our dream home, I had the dream 2.5 kids, a husband that loved me, and a supportive network of family and friends. I was cognizant enough to realize how great things were, but when I sat still I could feel something key was missing. Happiness. I still couldn’t figure it out, which frustrated the life out of me, because after all, having it all figured out was my lifelong M.O.
Naturally, I did what I knew best, and pointed my frustration toward my husband. It was so much easier to blame him than face the alternative of taking a good deep look within. When enough was enough and solace was not found in the incrimination of him, I was left with no choice but to start asking myself some hard questions. Were the unsettled feelings about him, or a projection of my own inner turbulence? Eventually I sought out a therapist’s help. Turns out I was right, blaming him was much easier than wading through my own rubble.
In the past year of therapy, I’ve taken the issue of my perfectionism head-on, and it has been tough. Figuring out the “why” of a lifelong self-destructive behavior is painful and sticky and sometimes downright ugly. It’s been hard to own up to my short-comings. And it’s been hard to realize that my cherished badge has really just been a shield all along. Shielding me from deep sadness that the loss of a parent brings, shielding me from not knowing exactly where I fit into the world, shielding me from traumatic experiences with a loved one battling mental illness, shielding me from addiction, and ultimately shielding me from true happiness.
Through my journey of discovering this, albeit hard, it has also been liberating. I have found the untidy, unplanned moments in life are some of the ones I cherish most. I have found that when I don’t set crazy, unrealistic expectations of myself and others, I’m not only much less disappointed, but rather pleasantly surprised. I am learning the importance of grief. I now see that being hard on myself all this time hasn’t necessarily made me stronger. I am learning to trust in the greater plan. I see now that it’s okay not have everything together all of the time. Most importantly, at 36 years old, I am finally learning to be true to myself. And that makes me really happy.
In accepting the good, the bad, and the ugly in myself, I’m suddenly seeing the good, the bad, and the ugly of my husband in a different light. I’ve come to see that I’ve been wrong all along. Our differences have not been our demise, they’ve been our foundation. They’ve been what’s kept us deeply in love and bound together even through the rockiest of times. He’s seen the real me all along, he’s loved the real me all along, and he’s fought for the real me all along. After 14 years of marriage, I’ve finally put my finger on that missing piece. His love is big, but it was never going to be big enough to fill the void of self-love and acceptance that I was denying myself.
