The Chicken Dinner That Ruined My Marriage
It’s November in North Texas, brisk and cool. I still haven’t showered from my morning workout. I’m wearing my work-from-home mom mask — high-waisted leggings pulled up at least 4 inches above my belly button, tank top long enough to cover my sagging stomach, OOfos slides to help my aching feet, high messy bun. I feel safe in this uniform. It hugs only the parts of my body that I allow, letting me hide my physical failures.
In this mask I can pretend to fit in with all the other middle-class soccer moms at school drop-off. It says that I’m acceptable, adequate. It gives the illusion that I performed well today, that I worked out, that I am accomplished. This look joined with the eloquent emails I sent for our family business sends the message “I obey the rules, I have value. Please don’t be upset with me.” This mask is enough to make up for my lack of makeup or style. It walks the tightrope between lazy and respectable.
So far, it’s been enough that my husband has not complained, but also has not initiated sex with me in the last half a year. It used to bother me that he didn’t want me. Sex used to make me feel loved. Now the lack of touch just reminds me that I have been alone in this relationship for as long as I can remember. The other day he touched me on the back as he brushed past and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Uh oh, that’s not a normal response. Guess it’s something else I need to bring up in therapy this week.
It’s lunch time, so I’m busy in the kitchen filling cups with water and the precious nugget ice cubes that I was instructed were to be used exclusively from my expensive GE Opal Countertop Nugget Ice maker I received as a Christmas present. For months afterward, anytime I asked for attention, he reminded me of the $800 price tag.
Apparently, affection can be paid for with household appliances, as long as they cost enough.
He comes in the back door with a tray of smoked chickens.
He didn’t say a word, but after 20 years together my gut said something was off. I pursued because I’m the pursuer. I rushed over to him, took the tray, stepped back, looked in his eyes and said “Is everything okay? Are we okay?”
My stomach is rolling. I want to run away. I know the answer. I always know the answer. I just didn’t know what my sin would be this time. Is this one forgivable? Can I clean this mess up? The glasses on the table have started sweating. Each one has hundreds of droplets beading on the side. Each one gets bigger until the weight makes it slide down slowly into the puddle forming on the table. You can wipe the puddle up, but the glass is still colder than the air, so the puddle keeps coming back. You can walk away and forget about the mess but eventually, the puddles will turn the brown table white, and you are no longer able to wipe the stain away.
This — our relationship — cannot wipe our problems away anymore.
“After dinner we need to have a conversation.”
No. God. Please, no.
“After we eat I have a meeting, but when I get home we can talk about separating.”
I feel the anxiety flooding my body. I start to hear a pounding in my ears, and I can’t tell if blood is rushing to my head or leaving it. I hate this. It feels so shameful. I know I’ll do anything to make him stay. I always do anything.
“Separating? What did I do? What do you mean? Please don’t do this. I can do better. I can do more. I’ll stop telling you my feelings. You can’t just abandon your family. What can I do? Please let me make it better.”
I beg. I have no pride left. He knows this about me. I also know this about myself. This is who I am. My core belief — I am a desperate woman. Someone who needs to be loved in order to prove that I am lovable. A sponge. I’m absolutely wrecked. Terrified. Needy. Lost. I’m angry that I let this happen.
This is my creation. I did this. I could have kept my corporate job instead of quitting 10 years ago and building up his business. But I trusted him to take care of me. In doing so, I pitched 70K in the trash every year for the last 10 years while I stayed in the shadows, holding him up. That’s $700,000 in direct deposits that could have proved my worth. Now I have nothing to prove my worth but my word of the thousands of hours I put in booking him jobs, writing his books, building him up. Who will be my reference? I used to be strong, but in this world we built where I am his assistant, I am nothing without him. He is my resume.
Our marriage was built on desperation and fear; then thrived on it for 18 years. When he proposed, he vowed even though he couldn’t promise me riches, he would spend a lifetime trying to make me happy. Liar.
When I accepted his ring, our binding contract assured me that I would always have value — because I would always be loved. I’d create the family that all the fairy tales assured me I could have, wrapped up in a happily ever after. I shut out the concerns of my parents from my head. Marrying outside my race would be hard, but it wouldn’t destroy us. Love would conquer all. Every time he mentioned a flaw I would cut off another piece of myself. Gray hair? Colored. Eyes the wrong color? Contacts can fix that. Monthly girl’s night out too often? Siyonara social life. My tears were tools of manipulation? I can cry in the shower. Every branch self-pruned until my tree of life was nothing but a stump for him to stand on. Or kick. Emotionally. He works on a stage and proclaims to hundreds of people how much he loves me and how important I am. His coworkers seek me out and tell me how lucky I am to have him. How amazing he is. I smile and nod, and wish they understood what life is like when I can’t make myself small enough for his world and he ignores me for a week. A punishment of neglect and indifference.
I used to think the opposite of love was hate. But to hate someone you have to actually admit they exist. After days of his silence I force myself to look in the mirror to prove I’m not a ghost. I change his contact picture on my phone to a picture of him kissing my cheek. A pose I begged him to fake.
Picture proof that I am actually loved.
For almost two decades, I’ve worn my marriage like my ring around my finger — shiny and big. I don’t point it out, but every time I pay for his lunch at the local drive-thru the cashier comments on how beautiful it is. I wave away the praise because it’s not nice to flaunt how loved you are. I realize that more often not I point with my left hand so the world can see all 4 carats, and measure the depth that I am loved.
The truth about those diamonds is not hard to see. Up close you can see large dark shadows in every stone, the flaws you can’t hide unless my hand never stops moving. Every time I slide the ring on, I feel the weight like a handcuff and remember the cost of the ring I helped pay off. The cost of being his wife.
The cost of appearing to be loved.
Every year I have to send it off to be re-dipped when the platinum plating rubs off and the yellow gold beneath starts to show. My whole marriage is made of cheap stones and a single layer of platinum, unable to withstand daily wear.
I continue to plead. He continues to be cold and distant.
I obsess about the two chickens sitting on the counter getting cold.
This was not the plan. We were going to have dinner — the chickens I prepared with smelly guts that were thrown in the trash that I asked him to take out when he got home from work. The trash he carried with deep resentment because he shouldn’t have to do this. The garage door he slammed on his way back inside because, for crying out loud, he earns all the money, now he has to do everything at home?
He thinks I see him as an ATM, with no clue he has become my entire identity. I like my married name more than my maiden. Do I have to give it back when he leaves?
Until now, I pretended the anger and resentment weren’t there. I was happy to swallow my dinner with a helping of self-loathing.
The tray is still sitting there. Can’t we just eat the damn chicken and get back to the business of posing? It’s better than nothing. I can do better this time.
We will not eat the chicken.
My identity starts packing his suitcase.
“I’ll still use your name in the business. It’s important that people know you are still on my team. Can I take your phone number and get you a new one? It’s the one all my clients use.”
The door closes behind him and I’m left kneeling on the bed, face in my hands, screaming the rage-filled cries of abandonment and abuse. My friends and family take turns telling me how much life is left in my tree stump. They don’t understand I have no value with no one left to stand on me.
